An Old Man in a Garden Musing on Enjoyment in Life
I am sitting in a quiet, beautiful garden on the Eastern end of Long island. It is an ideal July day with cloudless blue skies and balmy, cooling breezes caressing me. There is a sweet smell of freshly cut clover. Birds are chirping some kind of love song to each other. An occasional single engine prop plane drones overhead with a strangely relaxing sound. A white sea gull periodically swoops gracefully down near the trees as its beady eyes seek some kind of prey.
I am enclosed in my garden by closely packed lines of shaggy hemlock trees which remind my Rorschach oriented eye of the ogres from the Grimm Brothers fairy tales of my childhood. But these trees stand tall, silent and protective, obtruding the gaze of any “outsider” from my reverie.
I am content. I am enjoying the charm of the Present Moment of my existence. And I am 83! But almost involuntarily I begin to abandon this existentialism and I begin the bittersweet process of looking “ back.” And it is with pre-articulate gratitude that I recall the graciousness of God Who placed such peaks of joy in my life and Who at the same times placed in me my apparently endless capacity to “ enjoy.” Where does the enjoyment capacity come from? Environment? Example? Glands? Education? Infused gift? Wherever it comes from, it has a huge part to play in anyone’s life. And I do look back and it still gives me some experience of past joy! It is part of the enjoyment capacity or gift.
I see a skinny 12 year old kid ( myself) in a tenement street on Manhattan’s west side, euphorically playing stickball, using a broomstick handle to propel a “spaldeen” (Spalding/Spaulding) hurtling “ two sewers.” The street, then unencumbered by automobiles, was our playground where we exulted in exotic games like Johnny-Ride-the- Pony and Kick the can. I recall the fun I had when my Dad taught me how to box - - - with big, 16 ounce gloves. He taught me the jab and the right cross and the weave and the duck and the clinch! I could never hit him but what fun I had trying! How different that level and type of enjoyment from my present! But it suited the enjoyment level of a 12 year old.
I see a leggy, adenoidal 16 year old (myself) at the Paulist parish dances doing the Lindy Hop and the Shag, thinking that he was wowing the pretty girls in the saddle shoes and the flouncy dresses. In my own fantasy, I was a replica of Gary Cooper or Van Johnson. My jacket even had padded shoulders of which I was very proud. I enjoyed those narcissistic moments, even if so blatantly immature and self absorbed. Such interior behavior would make me nauseous today - - nevertheless I, and countless other undeveloped teens, report that we SO much enjoyed those temporarily insane years. What does this signify about different levels of enjoyment at different stages?
I recall my unbelievable élan at 18 when I ice skated on the frozen lake at 59th street and 5th avenue under the watchful eyes of the NYPD. This was long before public rinks and civic spirited Donald Trump types. The joy clearly belongs to another life phase. Not for me today when I can hardly bend over to tie my shoe laces.
I muse, I think, about the truism of “Stage Specific” and “Age Specific” wherein certain behaviors and capacities are appropriate and possible. I recall entering College as a self conscious freshman. Instantly, I adopted the pose of the intellectual with the fake hauteur of the snob. I even tried to speak through the fashionably clenched teeth of the “upper class.” I worked furiously to say sixty FIRST rather than my native pronunciation of sixty FOIST street (on which I was born). Such behavior would make me nauseous today but it was a highly prized life approach when I was 18. I must have enjoyed being the phony! But how highly inappropriate and depressing it would be at 83.
When I preached the Gospel with sky high enthusiasm (and indeed enjoyment) to the blacks and whites and browns and yellows of South Africa, I was deliriously enthralled with my own impassioned, superficial presentations which were so respectfully received by people twice my age, experience and virtue. It would be neither possible nor enjoyable for me to try to replicate that style today even for reasons other than age specificity. Yet, that kind of enjoyment was alive and well (for me) - - - - 50 years ago.
I found great enjoyment on a 9,000 ton freighter, the Greece Victory, as we sailed 17 straight days across the Atlantic to Capetown. I, hanging over the rail, lazily watched the horizon, fascinated by the flying fish who popped up every so often. I let the warm sun on the South Atlantic welcome me to the land of the Southern Cross. I said Mass each morning for three French Canadian Brothers en route to Rhodesia (Zambia). They spoke only French while I owned some very primitive high school language skills. Yet we enjoyed each other as we shared the Gun Crew quarters over the stern, prayed and ate together. I ate much, slept much and read mind muddying novels. Such flexibility and enthusiasm belong to young people, not to dinosaurs like me. So, as I muse, I know I had a kind of “fun” utterly out of the question for me today. My age, my life phase will not allow it. What do I make of this?
I recall my entrance into the world of television on WNBC when I met the famous and the powerful. Such meetings were usually before a television camera, and broadcast throughout the country: Cardinal O’Connor, Bill Buckley Jr, Mother Teresa, the Dali Lama, Jackie Gleason, Cardinal Mindzendsky (who, at 80,vigorouosly poked my chest as he made a point, leaving me to pity those dopey Communists who attempted to tame this Lion when he was 50), Malcolm Muggeridge and some of the brightest and the best.. They and myriads of fascinating people made up my world. Talk about euphoria and delight! I was “in.” I received invitations to deliver talks all over the country. Did I enjoy my life? That is a rhetorical question. I was floating on air! But that is all in the long ago past. What am I today? I am bald and arthritic and slightly Alzheimic. Age specific? Phase specific? My call at that stage from the Lord was to be in the TV world. Not now, when I stagger along not just with my physical gait but with my speech and my lessened mental agility. My call is something else. Isn’t it that young men see visions and old men dream dreams?
My mind is now cascading with memories of joys and pleasures and fun! How I enjoyed living. My sadnesses, my crosses, my disappointments, my monotonies, my envies and my temptations to the self destructive world of self pity are somehow pushed aside, significantly diminished, even annihilated, as I use the phenomenon of the half filled glass. I see Rome, the Eternal, with its overwhelming Basilica of St. Peter. I am overcome by the magnificence of it, the Pieta, the proportions, the Cupola. I gasp as I enter the Sistine chapel and do not believe my eyes. I am speechless before the Final Judgment of Michelangelo.
I am excited as I explore the Scavi, the burial place of Peter, himself, the first Pope and Vicar of Christ. My breathing quickens as I gaze upon the Moses in the ancient church of Peter in Chains and I wait for the Prophet to speak - - -so real is he! I almost float when I see Pope John Paul II go past me - -exuding the Holy Spirit and the real world of the mystical - - - blessing us, he, the very Vicar of the Lord!!!!!
I see myself with beloved friends sipping cappuccinos in the Piazza Navone admiring the church of St. Agnes and watching the chic world go prancing by.
I see myself in Florence rapt with the Doors of Paradise in the Baptistery of the Duomo, the David, the Ponte Vecchio over the river Sarno, the Medici museum, Can I forget the Chiesa del Sante Cruce and its tombs of Michelango and Dante and Petrarch and the square just outside where we had the great Lunch? Or Siena with its gorgeous cathedral and its utterly unique square?
And there is Venice with its canals and gondolas and St. Mark’s square. The fun I had with the Italian police as I showed them my detective shield from the NYPD and how they viewed me with such respect!
I am flooded with pleasure as I recall Paris with its incomparable Notre Dame, the Seine, La Sainte Chappelle, the Bateau Mouche, the streets and the little restaurants. I recall with utter pleasure the windows of Chartres cathedral and my trip to Lisieux where I prayed to the Little Flower and saw the snips of her hair preserved in a little museum. I saw the very chalice she prepared for Holy Mass each day and which I contemplated in photographs when I was a toddler.
Never did I dream that I would stand before it and almost hold it in my own hands.
With a strange mixture of reverence and excitement I visit the beaches of Normandy and I see the enormity of the achievement of landing thousands of young men under terrifying conditions, many of whom died right here on the beach. I wander to the cemetery which has the profound quiet of the Holy Spirit and I pray for those kids who would be my age had they lived through that horror.
Not enjoyment surely but I experienced some kind of satisfaction that I could enter ex post facto that world from which God spared me.
Never again would I see these things, never again for they belong to another phase of my own existence. Oh yes, I have multitudes of these memories of my relatively happy life. I was overcome by seeing the great Gloss Glockner in southern Austria. I was astounded by the Victoria Falls in Africa which the Africans call “the smoke that thunders.” I was delighted to view the Zulu war dances, somewhat modified by the work of French missionaries. I was pleasured beyond words when, at sundown, I went horse back riding over the Great Karoo with my 77 year old English friend, Major Joe Pringle. I recall one African night sitting with a young Spanish priest on a Church porch overlooking the great Zambezi river. There was a huge Full Moon which is somehow, by a strange geographical alchemy, different in Africa. We, two comparatively young clerics, smoking black Russian cigarettes and with total confidence in our own insights, were discussing what life is all about. As most old timers can say: I wish I knew as little about it now as I did then. But it was incredibly enjoyable - - - obviously, not possible for me now, so roughed up am I by the realities of life. But it WAS enjoyable, then!
How I enjoyed the Islas Balearicas and swimming in the warm, loving waters of the Mediterranean.How charming it was to have evening Mass, go with good friends for late and long dinners, chatting, telling jokes and drinking enthralling Spanish wines. But I can no longer physically endure the long trip to Spain as formerly. Yet that is part of some kind of eternal plan.
How does one analyze all this? What does one do to enhance one’s own meaning and purpose? Clearly, the enjoyment levels are different as one moves through life. Clearly, an oldster like me finds the opportunities of the past diminishing or gone. What does this mean to me?
Tevye in the classic Fiddler on the Roof speaks to God about how he would run his life were the Lord to allow him to be a “rich man.” The sweetest thing of all he says, would be to sit in the synagogue all day long and speak of the things of God. Getting older does allow one that very option. While some doors close and options narrow, by a strange paradox, things open on the other side of the life “stenosis” and reveal that there are ways for enjoyment other than the ones we knew. Is it God’s plan so to work? I think that the Gospel parable of the Talent is applicable. I have a talent in my old age for age specific enjoyment which I must use. It must not be kept buried in the sand of my life. It is my task to find it and USE it.
Can I believe that without any botany expertise I can enjoy looking at a rose and enthuse at its sweet scent? Can I understand that without any notion of counterpoint and clef, I can delight (at 83) in the great symphonies of Bach and Mozart and Shastakovich(?) and thrill to the fluidity of the strings and the proclamations of the horns and the great BOOMS of the bass drums and tympani? Where the limits to this kind of present time enjoyment? My sense of the Great Eternal Now?
So, as the shadows of my life fall and my final evening comes, I am back to my garden. Aristotle said that the perfect mathematical figure is the circle because it ends where it began. The peace of this garden is all about God, I think. The enjoyment specific to old age cuts through the joys of the past to allow me to see something of the Great Now.. Something so very basic to solving the puzzle.
Augustine of Hippo said it: Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”
Let those who have ears, hear…….
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Why this obsolete stance
of no sex before marriage?
She was a certified Social Worker,married and
divorced,plain looking and from a dominantly Catholic country. She sat
uneasily and almost plaintively verbalized the tired old question:
" What is wrong with
sex outside of marriage?"
She was struggling to be so au
courant--and hopefully avante garde! Yet, her struggle was
complicated by her delight and involvement in the RCIA
process in which she was an instructor/teacher. In her work
with those seeking entrance into the holy Catholic Church,
she met a candidate for Baptism whom she described as "
cute" and with whom she had become "
romantically involved." This is a contemporary euphemism to
describe their sexual involvement. The candidate had also been married
and divorced, was an alcoholic and deeply in debt.
In her modern style of being " with "the candidate
she had become so deeply attached to him that she had fantasies of marriage.
But even in her semi-trancelike state, this was problematical. So
true to the ideals of the " with it "
Catholic, she was challenging the official teaching of the Church on
sexual morality.
The venerable and oft maligned
Sig Freud wisely taught that " things are rarely
ONLY what they seem...." My client will speak
passionately about love and intimacy and personal needs. She will
point how passe and useless is the stance of the Church
on sex and the mysteries thereof. She will constantly allege
honesty,truth and reality for her position. But under such posturing
is an unattractive lonely, psychically crippled female
desperately and pathetically hoping SOME ONE will love her.
One cannot help but have sympathy, if not pity, for her.
I want to suggest to her that although her search
for love and intimacy is thoroughly legitimate and her reaching out to
others is very human, her mode of SOLUTION is --- from
the viewpoint of centuries of painful experience------stupid !
Her attempts to medicate her pain are so
understandable but so ill placed. Without the context of committed
married love---through pain and joy, riches and poverty, sickness and health,
youth and age, anger and peace,boredom and ecstasy-----the
sex medication alone is not only useless. It is damaging!
Society has found that it is through FAMILY
that one's loneliness is assuaged and one's hunger for love is
finally met.Family provides the safety that is needed for the healthy
rearing
and education of a child. To separate sex (
with all its excitements and pleasures ) from the
routinistic humdrum,worry and insecurity of human love is the OLDEST
MISTAKE OF MANKIND. It just doesn't work Yet,because
it is SO difficult to conquer inordinate desire ( or lust )
with reason and decency, God provides the way--- with His own command.
This command is articulated through His own
Church, the Catholic Church. Indeed, a colleague of mine, a Jewish
psychiatrist with whom I taught a course called "
Human Sexuality" for 16 years made this telling
and spontaneous remark in a class hour.
" Only the Catholic Church has
the power and strength to help people contain sexual impulses outside of
marriage."
Street smarts isn't enough. To tell my
client that her " cutie" can dump her unceremoniously
anytime he tires of her means nothing
in the period of her infatuation! The guts or viscera do not hear what the
intellect is shouting. Is this a delusion for her? There are NO
legal ties.
One stud told me ( in the presence of his
unwed bedpartner of one year) " I owe her
NOTHING." Heartbreak. Pain.
Emotional damage. They are all there.
When some such damaged, dumped woman said to
me " If I had only known this,I never
would have slept with him".
My question to her is: Who is obsolete now? Who is
passe now? Who has the closed mind? And eyes and ears?
IF YOU HAD ONLY KNOWN?
Lady you don't have to be the proverbial rocket
scientist to see it. Sex outside marriage
USUALLY doesn't work.
Lady, your old grandmother who didn't finish
grammar school was smarter than you have been !
But wait ! One bit of advice! God is also smarter than
you are. However, He loves you with an implacable love. You can
safely risk everything with Him !
Take the risk. Be celibate unless you marry.
And believe it or not, there IS life after celibacy!
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On Recovering from Culture Shock
On Recovering from Cultural Shock
When I was a New York City adenoidal sophomore in 1941, college students wore ties, clean shirts, jackets and sported crew cuts. We were what was called "College men." It was de rigeur for us to wear or carry hats, sharp straws in summer and Pork Pies, with ribbon, in cooler times. We were considered a Breed apart, the hope of the future, the big guys of tomorrow. Most of us, in fact, were struggling to overcome the slurred and indistinct speech patterns we knew from Hell's Kitchen, San Juan Hill or good, old Brooklyn which allegedly described the way we spoke. Brooklynese! Some of us won scholarships. Others took side jobs as ushers and messengers to pay the freight of tuition. Generally, we all were day hops, travelling by bus and subway. Living on campus was for Rockefellers and the fantasy of Hollywood.
Most of us came from the upper level of the lower class with little money and high expectations. Most families had one radio in the dining room shared by all family members as they listened to carefully managed newscasts wedged between heroic presentations such as Mandrake the Magician and The Romance of Helen Trent or why romance need not be dead for women over 35! Hardly anyone had an automobile or "machine" as they were called. The joys of vacation were limited to Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Midland Beach or, if the fates smiled on us, Long Beach.
We consciously attempted to re-create ourselves in the fantasy image of some non-existent Harvard, Yale or Dartmouth undergrad. We faked the sophisticated speech of the East Side as we spoke through fashionably clenched teeth and used the big words we learned the day before. Some of us even carried pipes to give an added aura—knowing full well if we ever attempted to smoke we would probably sicken.
We thought our music was smooth and catchy. We were enthralled by a skinny Italian kid from Hoboken, Sinatra, and a velvety voiced guy from Spokane nicknamed "Der Bingle" who had us all singing about a White Christmas. Big Bands were the thing. Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw set the stage for the "in" dances. The Lindy Hop and the Bunny Hug and the Shag! Our dancing was described as "cutting a rug."
The girls we dated wore saddle shoes and long skirts that swirled. They wore their hair relatively short with curls encircling their faces giving them what we thought was a clean and sweet look. They wore white gloves while carrying a little hand bag. They wore hats to Church on Sunday and always looked what was known as "ladylike." The core of a good date was to take one's girl to the Parish weekly dance which was followed by a trip to the local Candy store for a Cherry coke with fascinating talk about new songs and their impact on our dancing. That was it! There was an unspoken and almost universally accepted high norm of behavior. No Hanky Panky! Perhaps, the modern says "Repressed"—we said—"Respect."
It was winsome and innocent. It was limited but it was clean on every level. The dissenter from the "Code" was not respected but drew scowls and frowns of disapproval—even from my Uncle J.J., a mechanic with the Sanitation Department, who boasted of a sixth grade education in the local Catholic school. He knew somehow that marriage is a calling from God which could be marred by a confusion between furtive, hot, sweaty, adolescent pawings on a Saturday night and the relaxed, committed depth of the marital loving within the Sacrament of Marriage.
If by some strange concatenation of events, I was given a magic potion and thrown into a Rip Van Winklesque trance/ sleep and wakened in 2012, how would I react? How would I cope? Could I cope? Not having the "benefit" of the intervening 70 years with their wars, incredible scientific advances, universal access to previously hidden information and almost cosmic evolutionary changes in thinking modes and behaviors, would the shock be traumatic for a naïve and winsome son of the Forties?
My immediate shock would be how dirty and dowdy everyone looks. So many seem to be wearing work pants used by bench hands, janitors and farmers. I have seen people wearing these weird garments with the knee area shredded! I have been told that this is chic, that these pants are sold in fancy stores purposefully ripped! People look so sloppy. Can't they clean these things occasionally and dump the smudges and grease stains? So many guys are unshaven. Few wear ties. The color of their clothing so often seems on the dark side. Black and more black. I wonder whether or not this reflects what goes on within their psyches. Many of them have a harried, worried frown as if they just lost a job or else they wear a forced, frozen smile, painted on the face seemingly determined not to face reality. Is it decades of living with a potential nuclear obliteration? Or a super anemic economy which no one seems able to correct? Or is it disillusionment with the rhetorical promises of Eden which never came through? Or a lack of Faith and the terror of unbelief? Is the loud and artificial laughter I hear in restaurants a cover for inner emptiness?
Yet there are astounding comforts and conveniences never before available. Computers. iPads and phones, calculators, HD Television, automatic shift for cars, washing machines, dryers, Skype, touch tone phones, cell phones, Kindles, air conditioning, MRIs, and an endless list for better and more meaningful living. Yet there seems to be less happiness and more anxiety than ever before. It might even be a pandemic pain. I wonder about this as I watch and try to listen to modern singers. They seem to be in severe pain as they howl and mumble. They close their eyes tightly but they look like they are having stomach cramps. Where is the bouncing joy of Crosby or Clooney or Como or Kate Smith?
Can one understand the lyrics of modern song? Perhaps the modern listener seeks only sedation from a jungle type beat. Maybe understanding is not important. Of course, every age has its goofy songs. 1940 had some ridiculous attempts at music which met an early demise. But 2012 seems to enshrine and finance non-intelligible sounds.
And yet, there is today a huge sense of entitlement which can make contentment extremely elusive and rare. Consequentially, there follows a kind of apathy or simply not caring. Nothing means much. There seems to be a widespread, deep, inner doubt of one's own value or lovability. Consider, for example, this perennial question. Does how one dresses reflects one's values? It seems almost de rigeur today not to be sharp but to be tacky. Leaving one's shirttail hanging over one's posterior is to be today. Baseball caps are to be worn with the visor, (meant to shield the eyes) protecting the back of the neck in the manner of baseball catchers who wear masks to protect them from injury. Is that the unconscious dynamic behind this odd practice? Protection? If so, I wonder from what danger?
It is particularly modern, likewise, for females to have their shirttails bouncing over their often too ample buttocks. The negative effect is magnified when they are wearing shorts. Perhaps, they fantasize that such "classy" behavior somehow diminishes their fat ugly legs which aspect seems to me to be prevalent. So many young females look decidedly overweight. Even more are they "with it" if what passes for a skirt waddles just beneath their "pudendum". This is apparently intended to catch hopefully an admiring or lustful male eye. To top off the modern female neurosis, the exposure of much of the bosom is required. So pervasive is this practice that even a dried up old bat, a female one time Presidential candidate, decided to show her cleavage. Fortunately for her, the widespread reaction to throw up brought her to some kind of sanity whereby she returned to a more standard mode of trying, with futility, to make herself ravishing.
And, marone, men marry men! Women marry women! A guy has amputation of his external XY signification, has artificially induced bosoms and enters a female beauty contest. And, mirable dictu, is taken seriously and prances around in carefully rehearsed imitative female gait, as the judges rate his "female" beauty. Talk about the inmates taking control of the nut house!
So, how does one cope with all this nuttiness? How did any age cope with its own nuttiness? Every culture, every era seems crazy at times, or quaint from whatever historical crag one views the past. Obviously every age had its heroes and saints as well as its crooks and psychotics. How about Christian coping? All the nuts and neurotics and dum-dums of history are children of the Lord—according to the view of those who follow Jesus. Each has value even if, at times, one must plumb patiently the particular individual human comedy. This must be some good in this obvious klutz, this schlep.
One must be reminded, certainly this writer must, that Jesus would have gone through the horrific Passion He endured if there were only one schlep in the world for all time. Just one. Why? Because each of us is created in the very image of God Himself. An old legend notes that when God created Adam and Eve, He ordered the angels to bow down and reverence His new creation since "man" images Divinity. Those who refused were banished to the outer darkness of Eternal hell. Is not that enough to motivate schleps like me to adapt to that social custom which seems almost designed to make me "frow up"?
So let us be reminded that our experiencing these chaotic social sores which while shocking, must be tempered by the tenderness and patience of the heart of Jesus. And doesn't every era has its own right to be stupid—at least for a time? Come to think of it, I and my gang of the forties would have scored, at times, very low on common sense tests!!
New York city Memorial Day 2012 jbl
Monday, June 11, 2012
Holy spirit prayer
A Prayer For Light
O Holy Spirit of God, take me as your disciple: guide me, illuminate me, sanctify me. Bind my hands that they may do no evil; cover my eyes that they may see it no more; sanctify my heart that evil may not dwell within me. Be you my God; be you my guide.
Wherever you lead me I will go; whatever you forbid me I will renounce; and whatever you command me in your strength I will do. Lead me, then, unto the fullness of your truth. Amen.
On Remembering My Russian-Jewish Father
On Remembering My Russian-Jewish Father
One of my earliest memories of my Russian-Jewish father was praying that when I grew up, I would be as good looking as he was. He was handsome, elegant, an impeccable and classy dresser with a beautiful head of thick hair. Unfortunately for me no one who knew us both would agree that God answered my prayer!!! I have always been a high couture rustic with shoes which needed shining and further I am and have been follicely " challenged" ( meaning very bald).
Born Morris Rosenbloom to Schmule and Hannah from Bialystok (which was Russia or Poland depending upon the history which alternated the Border) he became an actor. His skills included Vaudeville, slapstick, Shakespeare, straight man to Fred Allen or Gracie Allen ( before George), creative and funny Burlesque (before the Sally Rand era and Billy Minsky), Sid Caesaresque Language skills, Borscht belt, the whole " shtick." He did it all and with gusto!
Most of all, however, he was a dancer. How he could wow the audience! Especially with his energetic rendition of the " buck 'n wing", a difficult and eye pleasing dance. Even as a kid of six, I knew when the applause would come streaming towards him from the audience flooding him with admiration and approval. It was as predictable as a hyperbolic curve. In all three or four daily vaudeville shows, the reaction was the same - - - thunderous applause coming from that great faceless, darkness " out there" which every stage performer knows and desperately needs.
Even at the age of 75 when I had him on my Television show on NBC, he danced with Minstrel Show music as if he were 40! Lolling around doing nothing was offensive to him so, as an oldster, he created a Clown act stemming from his work on the Howdy Doody show where he had played Clarabelle, the Clown. Doing kid shows at Bank openings and Filling station gigs, he packed on heavy clown makeup to mask his age and pranced around as a Funny Man not only to make a few shekels but also to give joy to others and to keep his own Joy of Life very much alive.
He taught me how to box with huge 16 ounce gloves. He played catch with me on West 6lst street off San Juan Hill. He gave me a dime to catch the local movie before One o'clock! He taught me to how enjoy the moment and to spend what little we had for our fun and to take "tomorrow" when it comes. I remember him, clearly, with gratitude and affection.
But there was something very sad about him. He was usually quiet and reserved coming ALIVE practically only on the stage. Only retrospectively could I even begin to grasp his inner turmoil. He had often spoken how "some people" (meaning himself) keep their feelings deep inside and do not easily speak them out. He had married a personable, outgoing, sensitive and quick tempered Irish girl, an actress and singer, whom he called 'Mick." Perhaps, the deep plan of Nature for Complementarity had its own inevitable drive to bring them together!
Perhaps his inner melancholy was partially temperamental and constitutional, but more obviously was triggered by circumstances. In 1916, Jewish/ Catholic marriages were rare and trying. The Abie's Irish Rose syndrome might work in the theatre where values are more fluid than in the general population or in some rarified "liberated" society but on Manhattan Island, such a Union was generally viewed with suspicion and skepticism. To pretend that anti-Semitism did not exist except in very unusual groups or that the WASP influence was not ubiquitous would be to admit either an ignorance of local history or a psychological, fuzzy wuzzy need to deny the obvious. As a little kid, I was terrified lest the other kids knew that I was Jewish. Fearing that harassment and insults would come pouring into my life from the rough wise guy street kids I ran with, I repressed the truth of my own back ground and pretended (even to myself) that I am ALL Irish!
With the agreement of all his siblings Morris Rosenbloom changed his name to Lloyd. Until my sister was four and I was two, our surname was Rosenbloom. Why was it changed?
Ask Jack Benny and Jessel and Berle and George Burns and Alan King and Dangerfield and a host of other Jewish performers of that era. They hoped that the burden of a Jewish name could be masked and that one could proceed with his or her career without fear of prejudice. In Russia and Central Europe, Jews, for centuries, had been harassed and even persecuted - - - - just for being Jews! Even though the CORE of my Catholic Faith taught me that such discrimination was evil and cried to Heaven for vengeance, a clear articulation of that SIN was lacking. Only with the onset of Vatican Council II was it shouted loud and clear that anti-Semitism is wrong as is any kind of
Inhuman and inhumane prejudice. Anti-black, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic stances are all of the same revolting cloth. So, Cardinal John O'Connor would preach unequivocally and regularly from the steps of his Cathedral in New York that CATHOLICS CANNOT PRACTICE ANTI-SEMITISM WITH IMPUNITY ! The great Pope John Paul II crossed the Tibur to enter a Jewish synagogue marking the first time in Catholic history that a Catholic Pontiff entered a Jewish house of Worship to pray.
But the suspicion was from the " other side" also. In the vaudeville custom of the times, my parents left their two children, my sister and me, with my Irish Catholic grandmother when they went " On the road", i.e. to perform in different cities. In that milieu we were taught the Christian way and lived accordingly.
It was a great and open family conspiracy that my Jewish grandparents never should know that their favorite and oldest son had married a GOY! So the elaborate subterfuge was created. Supposedly then, Morris really lived in the Lambs Club or the Friars Club or some "Club" where showpeople lived for business purposes, close to the theatre district. He would come " home" each Sunday afternoon for dinner where his mother would lovingly slip an orange into his pocket as he would leave to go back to the "Club." He was always her favorite child. It doesn't take my professional backround in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis to understand that there were some serious intra familial dynamics operating which have subsequently seeped into my own life. The dynamics are obvious and all concerned have lost something valuable by the collusion.
Apparently, it would have been the worst of calamities should my paternal grandparents know of the Marriage or of my sister and me who were both Christians.. Hence, we never saw or met them. This has been a regret and resentment all my life. Who is to blame? My father? My Mother? My Jewish aunts and uncles? Society? Perhaps all of the above but in the spirit of the French proverb 'TO KNOW ALL IS TO FORGIVE ALL". One must try to learn and understand the facts.
What WAS going on?
The tension within my father's heart between two "GOODS" which he loved, explains some of his melancholy which he would often mask by his theatrical skills. But the sadness remained. How can he give up his family of origin? How can he give up his own little family which he loves but which has caused him self depreciation when he allowed his children to be baptized and reared in the religion which symbolizes so much historical repression and injustice? How could he survive this balancing act? This series of contradictions and antitheses? How could he live peacefully with this deception which he loathed since he was an honest and sincere man?
Being unaware of this painful interiority of Morris Rosenbloom (Lloyd), my sister and I went about naturally and merrily practicing our Catholicism with our signs of the Cross and Holy water and holy pictures and STATUES of the saints all over the house, fingering Rosaries and reciting our Catholic prayers. And since there were seven Catholics and one Jew jammed into a railroad flat on New York's West side, Morris, the Jew, had very little chance to influence his kids the way he wanted. More pain. More frustration. More withdrawal.
Once when I was in the 6th grade, I wrote on the front page of my copybook FATHER James Lloyd, my father went into a near frenzy, furiously erasing the Father from my book and my (and his) name!
This would be the ultimate blow! That his son would become a PRIEST! Indeed, when, at 21, I told him that I was entering the Paulist seminary to " try it out" he shouted: " You are no longer my son."
I had utterly no idea what might be the reason for such an extreme reaction. I had seen my father " deck" an offensive punk. I had seen him repulse hustlers on the streets. But I had NEVER seen him so angry as with me. I never heard him use foul language or insult anyone or be unfair. So, It has taken me years to finally grasp where this furious shout was coming from! It came from genes and history and culture and insults and discrimination of centuries. It was Tevyev in Fiddler on the Roof shunning his own daughter for marrying a Christian, "out of the faith." To be a Christian was bad enough but to be one of their PRIESTS! This was clearly beyond endurance.
It finally dawned on me that the new name " Lloyd" would die with me since by a curious twist of unforeseen things, I was the ONLY one who could pass on this name through MY progeny! That I would be excluded from marriage was itself a tragedy to him. That I would never experience the joys of sexual love with a woman seemed utterly sinful to him - - - - - a viewpoint thoroughly in tune with the ancient Jewish way of life. That because of what appeared to him my selfishness or brainwashing or both, I would never enjoy my own children and I would deprive him of a kind of immortality he could understand through the continuation of his name, the Catholic Church was to blame! This confused, hurt and even angered me. It was a very dark time in my life.
Although he refused to come to my Ordination, he did come to see me off when I sailed to Africa on a freighter for what would be seven exciting and difficult years. When I finally returned, as a weather beaten, toughened Missionary, he had softened. Things were VERY different. He carried my picture in his wallet to show off his son, the priest! We would go for walks together for a late night ice cream when I had finished my work at the Paulist Information Center. When I was threatened by three Rabbis for Baptizing one of their young adult women, my father stood guard outside the conference room as I debated the three of them by myself!
What an irony! My Jewish father joined with me, his priest son, in an alliance against what he would have seen as his own tradition!
Our rift was finally healed when I joined him in a kind of " show
business." I had been hosting a television interview show on WNBC for some years and somehow wrangled the Big Brass to allow me to do an annual Christmas show in which I starred my mother, "The Strawberry Blonde" from Broadway's Metropole and her handsome husband, Morris,the novelty dancer. We threw in a couple of ringers each year, like Florence Henderson, to please the " Upstairs" guys but basically I was bringing back the old Vaudeville team of Lloyd and Ardell (Mom and Pop). My father, with his inevitable cigar stuck in his mouth, would brag to the gang outside the Palace theatre about Father Jim ( that's me). He even joined us in the finale as we sang CHRISTMAS HYMNS - - - Silent Night, Holy Night, Joy to the World, and God rest ye, merry gentlemen !!!!!
Twice, without any pressure or invitation, he came up to me when I was saying Mass and received Holy Communion from me!
Hey - - - where was all that anger and fury and isolation?
What happened? Apart from the powerful grace of a loving God and the profound love of a natural father for his only son, I don't know. There is something, however, which I do know and which I learned from the scholarly if controversial Pope Pius XII.
1 Never keep your mouth shut in the face of evil. Silence in the face of oppression helps only the oppressor. (Elie Weisel)
2 Any good person who follows HIS OWN CONSCIENCE as God gives him the light to see, belongs ( even should he not know it) to what we call the Mystical Body of Christ. His eternal LIFE and salvation are preserved and assured by Jesus Himself. This consolation was taught by Pius XII in his famous Encylical "Mystici Corporis" as authentic Catholic doctrine. Morris Rosenbloom followed what he thought was right. And he paid the price for Integrity in this life but he has received the welcome reserved for the righteous.
As my father lay dying in Roosevelt hospital, he advised me: "Stay where you are" (understood as priesthood) - - - as so many confused, immature and angry priests were deserting the Bark of Peter for the grass on the other side of the fence. Some regretted their impetuous move. While some former priests made the right move in jumping ship, many, many more moved into sadness and oblivion. Pop, in the end, wanted me to be a priest! So, we whispered into Pop's ear: " God loves you, Morris, God loves you." And he died. We gave him what some called THE STATE FUNERAL with scores of priests and brothers and nuns in attendance as we prayed for his entrance before the Christ he served without even knowing it.
Isn't life filled with ironies and mystery? The Jewish tap dancer dies in God's love very far removed from the rebellious young acculturated finger snapper who made fun of religion and piety. It looks pretty obvious that Christ died also for Morris Rosenbloom and Schmule and Hannah and for all as well as for Flanagan and Tucci and Lopez.
In my own old age as I face crossing the Great dark River myself, I, Jim Rosenbloom, priest and psychologist, want the world to know that MORRIS ROSENBLOOM WAS MY POP !
My Mother Wore Tights
My mother, Helen, the eighth child of Edward McArdle, an Irish Pub Keeper and his Jersey City wife, Mary, was born in Hell's Kitchen on the notorious West side of Manhattan Island. In a neighborhood saturated with poverty, brawls, riots, knifings, sassy wisecracks and endless street smarts, she, at the age of five, began to sing for adults, and quickly received the affirmation such coquettish behavior produces. She was, also, Nellie, her father's idol and the literal "apple of his eye." She became used to the limelight of attention and affection and although he died when she was seven years old, her early formed self concept easily led her into the world of the theatre. She was so successful in developing a pleasing and attractive stage style that she left school at the age of twelve to join a touring group of Child Singers in a by-gone form of American entertainment called Vaudeville which then enveloped the country in much the way that television is a vital part of our modern culture.
Her salary was sent to New York to support her now widowed mother who had been left truly penniless on the death of her husband whose assets, she was told by experts, had been immediately absorbed by what they called " expenses." The Pub was gone as well as the flat in which they all lived at 52nd street and 10th avenue. There was no widow's pension. No Social Security. No Government aid to which she could appeal for help. There was only the " Gerry Society" which theoretically rescued abandoned children from the streets of New York - - but which, in fact, was a gruesome custody. Horror stories about the rescued kids were told around the pot-bellied kitchen stove, the only source of heat in those frigid New York winters. The " Gerry" was considered the acme of abandonment.
So, her mother, Mary, the Irish American beauty from New Jersey, opted to keep all her children (seven still living at that time) contrary to the advice of the "sensible" ones around her. She scrubbed floors for ONE dollar a day! She scrounged and saved and " made do" with amazing versatility and adaptability. They lived in cellars and one room flats. They were bounced from the proverbial pillar to post. The kids slept anywhere, often on the floor. My Aunt Maggie who later achieved real scholarship at Columbia University with her outstanding Master's Degree in Political Science, at one time, had to sleep on TOP of a battered old piano. The kids often went to bed hungry and to school without lunch. They learned very early to " put up with things" and to make the most of what life offers.
Under such real poverty which makes modern descriptions of "being poor" look frivolous, mother and children huddled together, frightened and suspicious of the "outside" world. But nevertheless they did survive and surprisingly so, even though none (except Maggie) had any kind of education or training in anything. They all learned something, be it photography, auto mechanics, cooking, domestic housework, singing, postal work - - - - all made their own way! They confronted life with almost peasant Irish guts. There was no help or encouragement from teachers or mentors or social workers. Only guts and some kind of primitive Faith in God which they inherited from their simple mother and no-nonsense father.
So, my mother learned "show business" the hard way - - just by doing it. By failing and falling but by sticking with it she became very good at what she did. She was pretty, personable and flirtatious. She sang for President Woodrow Wilson in the White House wowing him with her rendition of " Saloon, saloon, saloon." She developed a singing style which absolutely flirted with the audience. We were told that when she sang "Danny Boy" she would have the whole theatre in tears. When she was fifteen years of age, she had snared a handsome Jewish tap dancer named Morris Rosenbloom. By the time she was twenty two years old, she had two children, a girl, Maurica and a boy, James, (me!)
Clearly, their professional reputation improved as they finally played the All High Mecca of Vaudeville, the Palace on Broadway. Yet, there were joints they played. There were backwater eyesores where they did four or five shows a day. There were night clubs and one night stands for special occasions. They became the stereotypic Vaudevillians hating the arrival of the monstrous successor, the Movie! But they loved their life. The train rides and the new audiences and the freedom to be who they really were - - - even with the illusion of the theatre - - were sheer delight to them.
Pop called Mom " Mick" since she had a fierce, unforgiving, supposedly Irish temper and became insanely jealous, often volcanic, if he dared even a quick look of appreciation at some of the shapely chorus girls who were all over the backstage in scanty and eye catching costumes. Often, Mom would take me out on the stage after her own gig to do a little fake buck 'n wing to the wild applause of the audience. I hated it! But I had to do it!
She conceived what she thought to be a brilliant show biz bit. She and Pop would do a classy Argentinean tango in authentic gaucho garb. Then my sister and I would follow with a miniature version similarly garbed but as a parody. The audience went wild every time. Again, I hated it but had to do it. So, when the well meaning nerdy stage hands would ask me, a six year old, if I intended to be an actor, I quickly learned to spit out a well articulated and ferocious NO!!!!
My mother had an unbelieveable memory, having committed 2500 songs to her inner computer. Part of their act was for my father to solicit requests from the audience challenging anyone to stump her. Few ever did and, in time, she showed up in Bob Ripley's famous BELIEVE IT OR NOT newspaper feature. It was preserved as a large poster of which she and all of us were extremely proud.
Her early need for recognition stayed with her all her life. She was admired and loved by many. While her need for some kind of attention was very powerful, she used it with great skill to bring joy and delight to multitudes! For a woman whose education reached only to the sixth grade in a Parochial grammar school, she was extraordinarily effective and successful. Not only did she hone her craft as an actress and singer, but she developed an interpersonal skill adequate enough to meet politicians, millionaires, high ranking clergy, anyone, with ease and confidence. She left THEM " wishing for more." When she was an old woman, a high level clergyman remarked to me that he bet "....that guy Lloyd must have been eager to come home every night." It was amusing to me to see the big talking Money men gravitate to my mother even when her daughter (who was physically beautiful but somewhat retiring) was by her side! Few women could compete with her when males were in her vicinity.
When she was eighty, she performed at a Nostalgia Night at Iona College in New Rochelle. I, as Director of the Graduate Division of Pastoral Counseling, was running a Fund raising campaign and invited her to entertain the College Community. She accepted in a flash, donned her Gay Nineties costume (see insert) and utterly captivated the egg-headed intellectuals with her Irish classics, her unabashed Americanism and even her famous rendition of Yiddishe Mama which overwhelmed the Jewish contingent!
When I would take her out to a Restaurant with live music, it was inevitable that she would saunter up to the piano, charm the musicians and shortly have the Mike in hand ready for " action." Even jaded diners lusting on escargots or Fettuccini Alfredo would pause and watch in amazement as she, in her nineties, belted out, Ethel Merman style, "Bill Bailey, won't you please come home?" or " You make me feel so young."
When she died, in accord with her view of life, I tried to make her funeral Mass at her beloved Paulist Fathers' Church in New York, a celebration or party. Her colleague and friend, Tommy Furtado, himself a noted Gotham night club singer, sang an original and beautiful rendition of " Bill Bailey". For the recessional hymn, the choir sang "When the Saints Come Marching In". We had refreshments at the entrance to the Church with the casket right there! Bizarre? This was her style - - laughing at life and death - - -with a simple uncomplicated Faith in Christ and the Blessed Mother utterly sure that she was loved and appreciated by everyone she met. Her belief that she would see the Lord and the Saints and her family and friends in heaven was unquestioned. For a poor kid from Hell's Kitchen she did a great job of handling life. At least, I think so but, of course, I am a bit biased. How many guys can boast of an Irish mother who married a Russian Jew and could sing Yiddish songs to College professors but finished only the sixth grade?
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On recovering from culture shock
On Recovering from Cultural Shock
When I was a New York City adenoidal sophomore in 1941, college students wore ties, clean shirts, jackets and sported crew cuts. We were what was called "College men." It was de rigeur for us to wear or carry hats, sharp straws in summer and Pork Pies, with ribbon, in cooler times. We were considered a Breed apart, the hope of the future, the big guys of tomorrow. Most of us, in fact, were struggling to overcome the slurred and indistinct speech patterns we knew from Hell's Kitchen, San Juan Hill or good, old Brooklyn which allegedly described the way we spoke. Brooklynese! Some of us won scholarships. Others took side jobs as ushers and messengers to pay the freight of tuition. Generally, we all were day hops, travelling by bus and subway. Living on campus was for Rockefellers and the fantasy of Hollywood.
Most of us came from the upper level of the lower class with little money and high expectations. Most families had one radio in the dining room shared by all family members as they listened to carefully managed newscasts wedged between heroic presentations such as Mandrake the Magician and The Romance of Helen Trent or why romance need not be dead for women over 35! Hardly anyone had an automobile or "machine" as they were called. The joys of vacation were limited to Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Midland Beach or, if the fates smiled on us, Long Beach.
We consciously attempted to re-create ourselves in the fantasy image of some non-existent Harvard, Yale or Dartmouth undergrad. We faked the sophisticated speech of the East Side as we spoke through fashionably clenched teeth and used the big words we learned the day before. Some of us even carried pipes to give an added aura—knowing full well if we ever attempted to smoke we would probably sicken.
We thought our music was smooth and catchy. We were enthralled by a skinny Italian kid from Hoboken, Sinatra, and a velvety voiced guy from Spokane nicknamed "Der Bingle" who had us all singing about a White Christmas. Big Bands were the thing. Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw set the stage for the "in" dances. The Lindy Hop and the Bunny Hug and the Shag! Our dancing was described as "cutting a rug."
The girls we dated wore saddle shoes and long skirts that swirled. They wore their hair relatively short with curls encircling their faces giving them what we thought was a clean and sweet look. They wore white gloves while carrying a little hand bag. They wore hats to Church on Sunday and always looked what was known as "ladylike." The core of a good date was to take one's girl to the Parish weekly dance which was followed by a trip to the local Candy store for a Cherry coke with fascinating talk about new songs and their impact on our dancing. That was it! There was an unspoken and almost universally accepted high norm of behavior. No Hanky Panky! Perhaps, the modern says "Repressed"—we said—"Respect."
It was winsome and innocent. It was limited but it was clean on every level. The dissenter from the "Code" was not respected but drew scowls and frowns of disapproval—even from my Uncle J.J., a mechanic with the Sanitation Department, who boasted of a sixth grade education in the local Catholic school. He knew somehow that marriage is a calling from God which could be marred by a confusion between furtive, hot, sweaty, adolescent pawings on a Saturday night and the relaxed, committed depth of the marital loving within the Sacrament of Marriage.
If by some strange concatenation of events, I was given a magic potion and thrown into a Rip Van Winklesque trance/ sleep and wakened in 2012, how would I react? How would I cope? Could I cope? Not having the "benefit" of the intervening 70 years with their wars, incredible scientific advances, universal access to previously hidden information and almost cosmic evolutionary changes in thinking modes and behaviors, would the shock be traumatic for a naïve and winsome son of the Forties?
My immediate shock would be how dirty and dowdy everyone looks. So many seem to be wearing work pants used by bench hands, janitors and farmers. I have seen people wearing these weird garments with the knee area shredded! I have been told that this is chic, that these pants are sold in fancy stores purposefully ripped! People look so sloppy. Can't they clean these things occasionally and dump the smudges and grease stains? So many guys are unshaven. Few wear ties. The color of their clothing so often seems on the dark side. Black and more black. I wonder whether or not this reflects what goes on within their psyches. Many of them have a harried, worried frown as if they just lost a job or else they wear a forced, frozen smile, painted on the face seemingly determined not to face reality. Is it decades of living with a potential nuclear obliteration? Or a super anemic economy which no one seems able to correct? Or is it disillusionment with the rhetorical promises of Eden which never came through? Or a lack of Faith and the terror of unbelief? Is the loud and artificial laughter I hear in restaurants a cover for inner emptiness?
Yet there are astounding comforts and conveniences never before available. Computers. iPads and phones, calculators, HD Television, automatic shift for cars, washing machines, dryers, Skype, touch tone phones, cell phones, Kindles, air conditioning, MRIs, and an endless list for better and more meaningful living. Yet there seems to be less happiness and more anxiety than ever before. It might even be a pandemic pain. I wonder about this as I watch and try to listen to modern singers. They seem to be in severe pain as they howl and mumble. They close their eyes tightly but they look like they are having stomach cramps. Where is the bouncing joy of Crosby or Clooney or Como or Kate Smith?
Can one understand the lyrics of modern song? Perhaps the modern listener seeks only sedation from a jungle type beat. Maybe understanding is not important. Of course, every age has its goofy songs. 1940 had some ridiculous attempts at music which met an early demise. But 2012 seems to enshrine and finance non-intelligible sounds.
And yet, there is today a huge sense of entitlement which can make contentment extremely elusive and rare. Consequentially, there follows a kind of apathy or simply not caring. Nothing means much. There seems to be a widespread, deep, inner doubt of one's own value or lovability. Consider, for example, this perennial question. Does how one dresses reflects one's values? It seems almost de rigeur today not to be sharp but to be tacky. Leaving one's shirttail hanging over one's posterior is to be today. Baseball caps are to be worn with the visor, (meant to shield the eyes) protecting the back of the neck in the manner of baseball catchers who wear masks to protect them from injury. Is that the unconscious dynamic behind this odd practice? Protection? If so, I wonder from what danger?
It is particularly modern, likewise, for females to have their shirttails bouncing over their often too ample buttocks. The negative effect is magnified when they are wearing shorts. Perhaps, they fantasize that such "classy" behavior somehow diminishes their fat ugly legs which aspect seems to me to be prevalent. So many young females look decidedly overweight. Even more are they "with it" if what passes for a skirt waddles just beneath their "pudendum". This is apparently intended to catch hopefully an admiring or lustful male eye. To top off the modern female neurosis, the exposure of much of the bosom is required. So pervasive is this practice that even a dried up old bat, a female one time Presidential candidate, decided to show her cleavage. Fortunately for her, the widespread reaction to throw up brought her to some kind of sanity whereby she returned to a more standard mode of trying, with futility, to make herself ravishing.
And, marone, men marry men! Women marry women! A guy has amputation of his external XY signification, has artificially induced bosoms and enters a female beauty contest. And, mirable dictu, is taken seriously and prances around in carefully rehearsed imitative female gait, as the judges rate his "female" beauty. Talk about the inmates taking control of the nut house!
So, how does one cope with all this nuttiness? How did any age cope with its own nuttiness? Every culture, every era seems crazy at times, or quaint from whatever historical crag one views the past. Obviously every age had its heroes and saints as well as its crooks and psychotics. How about Christian coping? All the nuts and neurotics and dum-dums of history are children of the Lord—according to the view of those who follow Jesus. Each has value even if, at times, one must plumb patiently the particular individual human comedy. This must be some good in this obvious klutz, this schlep.
One must be reminded, certainly this writer must, that Jesus would have gone through the horrific Passion He endured if there were only one schlep in the world for all time. Just one. Why? Because each of us is created in the very image of God Himself. An old legend notes that when God created Adam and Eve, He ordered the angels to bow down and reverence His new creation since "man" images Divinity. Those who refused were banished to the outer darkness of Eternal hell. Is not that enough to motivate schleps like me to adapt to that social custom which seems almost designed to make me "frow up"?
So let us be reminded that our experiencing these chaotic social sores which while shocking, must be tempered by the tenderness and patience of the heart of Jesus. And doesn't every era has its own right to be stupid—at least for a time? Come to think of it, I and my gang of the forties would have scored, at times, very low on common sense tests!!
New York city Memorial Day 2012 jbl
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