The Now

I met Baron Batch in his split-level loft in the arts district in downtown Pittsburgh in August. He was exceedingly pleasant, his demeanor accentuated by a soft voice and an occasional chuckle, over what I do not remember. I tried to coax a few memories from him. No luck. He’s 30 now, and several years ago had some memorable seasons as a running back in high school and college. Only a torn ACL, in his first NFL preseason with the Pittsburgh Steelers, would stop additional stories of gridiron glory.

Talking to Baron, it’s clear there are no regrets. Any experiences that happened to him in the past are but blinks of an eye in his brief and unassuming life. He’s quite blunt about it: his past football successes have little if anything to do with who he is today except for the fact that all those yesterdays, when stitched together, are just that: small threads that have created someone entirely different.

In the Fall of 2010, while still a student athlete at Texas Tech, Baron, a self-described non-writer who says he really disliked high school English class, wrote a newspaper piece called “When Ripples Collide.” It’s a true story about how everything fits together just so, how one action leads to another, then another, then another. In Baron’s story, several occurrences, at first disjointed and seemingly inconsequential, came together in a dramatic, life-altering way. And it all started with Ripple 1, as he called it.

In the piece, he writes of how a man approached him in a Lubbock grocery store and credited him with saving his life – all because of his article about playing football for Texas Tech – and about never quitting – appeared in a Wednesday newspaper, instead of in a Thursday edition, which had been his preferred day of the week when talks began with the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. The man in the market told Baron he had laid that Wednesday’s newspaper on the floor – the one with his article about not quitting — so the blood would be easier to clean up after he had shot himself – which he intended to do on the same Wednesday the piece was published (You can read the article here: https://www.mrt.com/…/Baron-Batch-When-ripples-collide-7432…)

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When I visited Baron, I expected him to share some thoughts about his days as a player first and then as a writer. But he has removed himself from both of those pieces of his past and has instead wrapped himself around a spirituality that is both intricate and simple.

Almost two hours into our talk – the first interview he had given in several months – I was still searching for an angle. Often, people will share a story and give some small insight into their past or present and the story will write itself. Not so Baron. Almost two months after our talk, he remains the most difficult interview I’ve had in almost 35 years of doing this. I had no idea why I was there or what I was going to write.

But here’s the deal: One thing that has remained with me since that day is this: Baron has totally surrendered himself to the now. He has an uncanny ability to shun the past, ignore the future, and grasp the joy inherent in his ability to compartmentalize each … individual … moment, one at a time.

When we were finished talking, I left bewildered. Baron gave me a quick guy-hug as I left. His hospitality was endearing and genuine, his sincerity and transparency refreshing yet confusing. Seldom have I spoken with someone both friendly and almost completely impenetrable. But there just didn’t seem to be a story there. Or at least not one I could effectively tell.

Days passed. No ideas for what I was going to write about sparked. Weeks went by. Nada. A month after our interview, a text: “I apologize for not having written anything. I assure you I was not misrepresenting myself during our visit.” A simple reply: “Thanks, Jimmy.”

And then I saw the rocks in South Dakota. Ripple 1.

A park ranger told us the geological formations in Badlands National Park were created 60 million years ago, but in another 100,000-500,000 years they would change their formation first, and then finally disappear entirely because of erosion.

Surely these rocks must be getting a little antsy. In human years, they’re, like, 90 now. Surely the rocks regret that they didn’t properly prepare for the ice age or wildfires or floods or humans for that matter. Especially humans. And surely these rocks must be counting the days until their total demise, that time in their history when they will become a memory and they will be left with only regret that their legacy was not more meaningful to more people.

Humans are the only beings with the ability to ruminate over such stuff I guess. So many of us spend half our time regretting the past and the other half fearing the future, and we are often left with no time to enjoy … the now.

Six months before we started this trip, all I could do was think about it. Now, it is essentially three months from being over and I find myself over-thinking about what comes next when normal life resumes. There is precious little time remaining to enjoy today’s little moments.

This is not a problem unique to any of us. Unless your name is Baron Batch, many people suffer from an inability to focus on the present for any length of time, especially in a fulfilling way. Moving from moment to moment with joy and without worry or regret eludes millions.

Two quotes, somewhat similar: Karen said the other day that, “From the moment we’re born, we start dying.” That holds true for Badlands rocks and humans and everything in between.

Second quote: In one of the best lines to ever bleed from Larry McMurtry’s pen, Augustus McRae told Captain Call, “It ain’t dyin’ I’m talkin’ about, Woodrow, it’s livin’.”

Too many folks turn good times into worry time. And when good time becomes worry time, it becomes a moment we not only fail to live but a moment we begin to die a little quicker. Trust me, just because I sit here writing all fancy about how we should worry less and live more does not mean I go out and do it every day. I’m more worrier like mom and less warrior like my WW2 Navy veteran dad.

It’s one thing to write nice thoughts. It’s quite another to actually go out and live them. So don’t do what I do. Do what Baron Batch does: Live the moments. Revel in them. Seek joy from them. Turn “Time’s a wastin’ ” into “Never enough hours in the day.”

Don’t get to the end of the day and wonder what you could have done to make it better. Instead, make it better so that at the end of the day you can look back on it in wonder.

 

Photo of Baron Batch at his Pittsburgh home.

Making it up as we go

Let’s talk RV parks … Ever pull into one for a quick overnighter and not unhook from your tow vehicle? You’re exhausted after a long drive. It’s late. And since all you’ll be doing is basically going to bed, you stay coupled. Not only do you save time at the end of your current long day, but the next morning you save even more time. Fold up the stairs, lock the door and there you go: off on another exciting day of mile after mile after mile.

Karen calls these stop-and-go nights “touchdowns.” We usually just step into the rig and flip on Netflix until it’s time to go to bed. No fuss. No muss.

Until this week.

We spent a month driving across South Dakota this week, and when we pulled into a campground one night in Presho, we just wanted to close the door and power down. We sat on the couch and we were fine. Until we got up to walk around inside.

I’d thought, hey, we’re in central South Dakota. It’s got to be level, right? Everything’s got to be level everywhere. Every minute. Everyday.

While I was still outside, I connected the water and electric, so we would have coffee and a shower — the absolute essentials for a touchdown stay — and then I walked inside to find that we were at such an exaggerated uphill angle that Karen couldn’t walk from the bedroom to the kitchen without needing her high-altitude medication. We were so dramatically out of balance that had our rig been a hiking trail, it would have been designated a strenuous technical climb. Oh, and nothing will start a day off on the wrong note faster than having to sleep with your feet higher than your head, especially if you’re an acid-reflux sufferer.

But I do love staying at RV parks. Especially mom and pop parks, places that just sort of make up the rules as they go along. That’s kinda the great thing about mom and pop campgrounds.

“Just park anywhere,” the owner tells me, sipping a beer, working a crossword. “Oh and, hey, if your septic backs up, just take a hammer to the sewer intake hole, give it a couple of whacks. That should free ‘er right up.”

Sometimes mom and pop spots can cram a few too many rigs into their park. And let me tell you, nothing inhibits a nice evening sitting outside your rig quite like a neighbor who decides to drain his black tank inches from your patio. And few things can turn you against a neighbor faster than hearing him say to his wife as he walks out the door: “What’s that smell? Wow! Hope that’s not us!” It doesn’t matter if he’s talking about him and his wife or you and yours, it spoils the relationship.

There does seem to be some randomness about when mom and pop parks honor Good Sam rates. Surge pricing is real. No Good Sam rates on Little League World Series weekend in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. I understand that. But no discounts on Boxing Day weekend while camping in Louisiana? Yom Kippur in West Texas? We camped at one RV park and they wouldn’t take a Good Sam discount because it was the owner’s second cousin’s third’s wife’s fifth son’s birthday.

We stayed at one mom and pop in Minnesota and when we checked in they gave us a plastic wristband to wear so they would know we were registered guests. I’m old school, but I figure just sitting outside of our rig is normally all the proof necessary that we’ve registered. It’s not like we can sneak past the guard at the front gate. Wearing that bracelet all weekend I’d hoped they’d at least put in a tilt-a-whirl or some cotton candy machines. Instead wearing a wristband made it feel less like I was a guest and more like I was on a work-release program.

We’ve been blessed to have visited many places and it’s refreshing to notice people are often the same pretty much everywhere. It’s the bugs that are different. The only difference between Minnesota and Louisiana is that in Minnesota the mosquitoes wear extra-large parkas, and in Louisiana, they sprinkle Cajun spice on you before they bite. In Ohio, the flies were lined up outside our door just waiting for us to come outside, and in Cape Cod the flies called ahead for reservations.

Early on in this trip, we talked about doing some boondocking, and we did try it twice: once at Goosenecks State Park in Utah, but then our dog very nearly ran headfirst off a 1,500-foot cliff. And then we got stuck in the sand at Lake Powell in Arizona. After those two catastrophes, Karen now defines boondocking as camping somewhere more than five miles from the nearest Wal-Mart Supercenter. And I say ‘camping.’ But I really mean RVing. They’re not the same as I’m sure you know.

There’s one thing I’ve noticed about RV Parks, regardless of whether they are corporate-owned or privately run: Why is it that if I walk into the office to check in, I have to wait for the camp host to finish talking to whoever is on the phone making reservations, but if I’m on the phone making reservations, I have to wait until the camp host is finished checking in the person who’s in the office?

Finally this fulltime RV living has changed me and my perception of what is and is not possible in life. I used to have two nightmares that are now more appropriately described as dull, throbbing inevitabilities. The first one is this: we arrive at an RV park for an overnight stay. We will not unhook since it’s a quick touchdown, and we will get hungry and I will hop in the truck — parked in the campsite, still hooked to the rig — and I will drive away, Karen and the dogs jostling around, still inside, electric and water still hooked up, slide outs still extended.

The second image is a bit more abstract but something that still seems like it has a vague chance of happening one day in the future: I am driving down an interstate somewhere, either in the middle of nowhere or in the middle of heavy traffic in a downtown area somewhere, and I will look in my rearview mirror and our fifth wheel will no longer be there. It will be gone. Poof! Nowhere. Vanished. As if it had magically unhooked itself without even making a noise. It will be so far gone I can’t even see it lying by the side of the road behind us.

I must have been bitten one too many times by those pesky biting flies in Georgia.

The man in the photo

By Jimmy Patterson

In a couple of days, Karen and I will cross the Missouri River, headed west across South Dakota, and into Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

We are beginning the home stretch of our year of meeting the country. We’ve seen a lot, yet not nearly enough. We’ve met good people, but know there are many more. It’s been an up and down experience – mostly up, by far – although this lifestyle will slap you silly when you least expect it.

At our greatest camping distance, last month in Maine, we were exactly 2,222 miles from Midland, our home of 30 years. When in Maine, we ventured even further north and east into Acadia National Park, 150 more miles up Highway 1 and almost 2,400 miles from West Texas. Maine is so far away it felt at times that we had left the Lower 48, only to return to the mainland when we touched down in Cooperstown, NY, for one glorious week.

We have seen much, but nothing else quite matches Cooperstown, an extraordinary combination of natural beauty, small-town Americana and flag-flying love of country. We were repeatedly amazed at the number of American flags flying on Main streets and in neighborhoods in Cooperstown, and in towns up and down the east coast. The patriotism is everywhere and it was heart-swelling to see.

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A journey like this must be done with ease. Long drives beg for lengthier set-downs, but since we have been making our way across the Midwest for over two weeks now, it has been come, go, come, go, come, go, almost on a daily basis, and that can be weary on the back and the soul.

Last week, we were in Iowa. After one night spent in an RV Park 50 yards from the banks of the Mississippi, a knock sounded on our door. It came from the RV park operators, there to order us to evacuate because of a levee breach upriver earlier in the day. Only two weeks before, the same park had taken on six feet of water when the Mississippi over-ran its banks. We didn’t have to be asked twice.

We squeezed in a few laughs and memories with Sister Malachy, a Dominican nun, longtime friend and confidant, and former Director of Women Religious in the Diocese of San Angelo. Seeing Malachy was a comfort especially as we navigate through the rough waters of the church during these difficult weeks. We headed next to Waterloo (pronounced WaterLOO by the natives) and found the Cedar River at an even higher flood stage than the Mississippi.

We have seen so much beauty on this trip, you must be tired of reading about it. But I will say this: Iowa is the most well-groomed state I think I’ve ever seen. It’s like the whole right half of Iowa goes in for a shave and a shine every day, and is then swept up and vacuumed by a really conscientious, large and dexterous barber.

As we head west this week, we face a certain amount of unknowns. Will the weather hold? Will the roads be good enough for this rolling house of ours? How great is the distance between towns in Eastern and Central Montana? Will we have enough diesel to get us from one to the next?

South Dakota, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming – all of which are like venturing into foreign countries for us – are intriguing, mysterious and maybe even a touch unsettling because of these unknowns. But there are things still to do: We have promised Karen’s mother we will fly fish in her honor in Montana, and I have promised myself to ride a horse — at something greater than a slow pace while being led — in Wyoming. In another life I must have been a groom, a frustrated ranch hand who really wanted to break a mustang but was instead left holding a brush and a bucket of oats at the end of the day.

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But regardless of what’s ahead, what we have just experienced in the last ten days has enriched all that we have done to this point and all that lies ahead. In fact, on no less than 10 occasions since leaving Midland, we have been able to spend time with family members — immediate family in Texas; a cousin, aunt and in-laws in Oklahoma; Karen’s mom and dad in Florida; a nephew in Maine; more cousins in Chicagoland; a dear friend in Maryland and another in Las Vegas. We just finished a fast and furious run through each of the Ohio Pattersons, now spread from Cleveland to Minneapolis: five cousins (all brothers and sisters), and their spouses, and a beloved aunt. Many of them we haven’t seen in years, and many Karen had only heard about and never met.

In the last few days, I have had the blessing of getting to visit cousins I haven’t seen since I was “this high.” The Ohio Pattersons have long been the keepers of the family tree, the holders of knowledge and the tillers of the ancestral vineyard, and so visiting with them, seeing them again after so many years and talking about our fathers, our uncles, our moms and aunts, brothers and sisters and children has been like walking into the most fascinating participatory history class I could ever imagine.

Last night, my cousin Bill and his wife, Gwen, visited our RV. At the end of the evening, Bill held up a studio portrait that was 100 years old. It was a picture of my grandfather. I don’t recall having ever seen that exact photo, and if I have seen it, it was many years ago when I was a cocky kid with little interest in anyone but myself.

Claude Patterson was 16½ when the photo was taken. As it would turn out, when he posed for the photo he was precisely halfway through his life. He died when he was 33, and when his son, my father, was 9 in rural Gentry, Arkansas. He died of a rare genetic disorder that has affected many of us — and bound us together — for the last century. It is believed to have started with my grandfather, a rural letter carrier, when a tumor the size of a grapefruit, perched on top of his adrenal gland, ruptured unexpectedly. He died soon after, of something now known as MEN2a.

Seeing the photo of my grandfather was like opening the lid to a cedar chest filled with my family’s past. I couldn’t stop looking at it, marveling at it, wondering what kind of man he was. And of course it soon became quite clear: he was the same kind of man as my father, and my uncle. The same kind of person as my cousins and my sister and brother. Claude Patterson runs through all of us. Spending time with these good people, all descendants of this man, my grandfather — our grandfather — none of whom ever met him — was a moment that has transcended any natural landscape we have laid eyes on this year. An unexpected moment in a year filled with unexpected treasures. If we had to go home tomorrow, our journey would be complete.

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Photos: A hand-drawn map of where we’ve been (actual miles traveled in green and black, original plan in pink. Claude Patterson (1902-1933), 16½, Gentry, Arkansas.

A brief and necessary escape

When I was a kid, I recognized quickly that my dad knew most everything there was to know about baseball. And when he didn’t have an answer to one of my questions — in what was likely an endless stream of questions — about Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente — my favorite players as a boy — he would rise from his recliner and walk to one of his many shelves filled with baseball books. “Who’s Who in Baseball,” “The Sporting News Dope Book,” “The Baseball Register.” He waited eagerly for each of those books to be brought every year by Joe the Mailman, who went from letter carrier to family friend. My mother often offered him tall glasses of ice water during the long hot Texas summers, and on some days, I remember he would come in our house for five minutes, enjoy the refreshment, and the visit. They just don’t make the good old days like they used to.

My dad’s favorite ballplayer was Stan the Man, and he shared stories he remembered hearing, likely from his father, about Christy Matthewsen. Both men, though they played decades apart, were men of high moral character, not to mention darn good at their chosen profession.

My dad and I would often have conversations about his love for and knowledge of the game, and I remember his ability to call up a fact by searching his library full of information on one of those many shelves of his. It was so different from today’s world. Google and other helpful tools on the Internet today have removed that period of time between questions asked and questions answered … time spent pondering questions … time spent just thinking. Despite all its positives, Google keeps us from supposing before finding. And that interim time was time spent together.

Side note: For heaven’s sake, there is even an app today (I’m told) where you can record a song playing in the background, a song whose name you can’t quite remember or don’t yet know, and it will tell you the name almost immediately. I remember spending days between hearing a song on the radio wondering what it was and when I would hear it again, and now, all that is gone. For younger readers: in those days, in a unique way, having to wait to hear a song again very definitely helped cultivate a love for music. I don’t mean to be harsh on Google, I use it multiple times a day and appreciate it for what it is, and my point is not to share with you the impact music had on me as a kid.

Instead, yesterday I sought and found sanctuary at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown. I needed a place of sanctuary after the depressing and sordid news of these last few days. It was like I had escaped a dark, smelly alley for a field of lavender. For $23, my soul was filled for the better part of the day.

It finally dawned on me why I love The Hall so much: It’s like spending time asking baseball questions of my dad, in his recliner, in our den, in my boyhood home. All the answers were there either in his head, or in his books at arm’s length. And so he seemed to be there with me as I strolled through The Locker Room and up to the stadium exhibits and all the treasures that reside between the two. I knew which exhibits he would have ruminated over (most of them) and which he would have moved past with not as much time spent studying (not very many).

While there, I yearned to ask a few more questions of my father about the early game, a game that while the same in his time, was also much different than the engineered version played today. The game he loved was about ballplayers, heroes, emotion, real life, and America, not defensive shifts and exit velocities and launch angles. Although Cooperstown has incorporated useful technology on some of its exhibits (giant screen replays of David Freese’s two home runs in the 2011 World Series still brought tears to my eyes, and I wondered how such a nice guy could take so much that almost belonged to Ranger fans). I pray that there will never be any hall exhibits about realignments or photos of all four infielders positioned between first and second, or placards about general managers who are more math geek than talent scout.

Cooperstown still honors the bonds the game creates in families, bonds not just between fathers and sons, but between fathers and daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and daughters. I walked by an exhibit of signed baseballs under protective glass as a father explained to his daughter the value — the real meaningful value — of a signed Ken Griffey ball. And I sat in wonder like a kid watching a video clip of Nolan Ryan (who was somehow named after my grandson). As footage of him throwing one of his eight no-hitters played on the big screen, he told the interviewer, “I knew when the ball left my hand they weren’t going to hit it.” I’d never heard him say that before. I was enthralled.

While the debate rages on about who should and who shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame because of shady pasts, Jim Thome escapes any of those debates. When inducted last month, Thome said, “If you try to conduct yourself with honesty and authenticity, the result is the most natural high a human being can have.” Simply having Thome in Cooperstown increases its integrity, and the legacy of all that is good about the game and those who played it with honor.

Late afternoon, the only thing left for me to see was the exit sign. I had hoped to avoid the only thing in this place I do not like. I hesitated passing through that door, leaving the lavender garden for the inevitable return to smelly alley. I stood for a moment at the door before exiting onto the front porch outside the main entrance. I turned and pulled out my iPhone and snapped a quick picture of the front of The Hall. Or was it the den, and my dad’s recliner and book shelves, and my boyhood home?

The Family Priest

By Jimmy Patterson

The boy was three maybe, certainly no older than four, and he would pass the time Sunday mornings by imagining the pews on which he sat were roads and he would roll his tiny cars over and around his make-believe world. One Sunday morning he playfully tossed his small car into the center aisle just as the priest was processing in, joyfully singing the opening hymn every step of the way. And when the priest saw the small car on the floor, he stopped, reached down and picked it up, and rolled it across the top of the pew and back into the boy’s hand. The priest patted the child on the head, tousled his hair, smiled and continued his procession to the altar.

The older sister was a teenager by then and one day she told her mom and dad the priest had called her Stephanie when he gave her Holy Communion. The priest knew everyone by name and he called every single person by name during Communion. Except that the girl’s name was not Stephanie. He would call her by her actual name most everywhere else, but when he gave her Communion he had a mental block. Everyone has them. It came to be a running joke with the family and one Easter morning, “Stephanie” wore a “Hi my name is …” name tag and wrote in her real name, and when she received Communion, the priest smiled, even laughed, before extending his arm and saying, as he had tens of thousands of times before, “The body of Christ.”

The middle child was quieter, perhaps less moved by the whole church thing. The priest loved the middle child’s name because it was Irish, and he was Irish. She had red hair, and so did he. She was left-handed and so was he. And so there was a shared bond and the priest made her feel special because of their similarities. No one since those days has made her feel as good about attending church as much as the left-handed, red-haired priest. She was a lot like the priest. And that was something neither her brother or sister could say.

The priest helped the mom and dad through a bad patch, shared meals with them, and invited them to the rectory to show them his hand-crafted pottery. They listened as he gushed over his favorite movie, and as he talked of how much he wanted his parishioners to work harder to better themselves within their community.

Most of all, the family loved their spiritual leader because he was human just like them. He had problems and concerns and challenges that kept him up at night just like them. The family stood in awe of his ability to love and move people, to inspire them and to bring them closer to God.

And then the priest became sick and died and the family cried and mourned and tried to understand God’s hand in the passing of this truly great and holy man and they remembered him for years and years. And the dad considered The Family Priest to be on his personal short list of those who’d had the greatest impact on him spiritually and he would always be on that list, and maybe even at the top of that list, forever.

And then one day this week the phone rang and the oldest daughter, who was now in her 30s, answered. A moment or two later, after mom and dad had shared the news of some sort of growing scandal in Pennsylvania, she began to cry inconsolably. Her parents were left to try to dry her tears even though they were half a country away, but honestly there was no drying any tears on this day. Shock and confusion then came from the middle daughter who did not cry when she heard the news and could only ask, “How can the church be keeping records of everything these priests are doing but not be punishing them?” And her mom and dad could not answer her question.

They picked up the phone and called the boy who rolled his cars on the pew so many years ago but was now a man. A man who had been too young to learn any theology from the priest but who still remembered the profound impact the holy man had on him as a child. A moment later, he was angry, sickened by what he had read about the family priest and 300 other priests who had been accused in the latest darkest chapter of the church, a church that is broken and close to beyond repair. A church that has lost the trust of the people that have relied on it for two millennia. A church that has failed to protect its people. And the boy who is now a man cried like his big sister and lashed out in anger like his middle sister.

The Family Priest — Our Family Priest— may be gone. But lo, he is far from forgotten.

And so our family, like thousands of other families directly or indirectly affected by the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report, is left to wonder: The memories we shared … did they even happen? Because after reading the indictment, we can’t just say to our grown children, “Yes these charges are credible, but we still have all those wonderful memories together, don’t we? Gosh, we were blessed, weren’t we? We can be thankful we were not among his victims.” That kind of response is not human nor remotely decent. The only thing to feel right now is loss. The person who identified as a priest no longer qualifies as one. As our oldest daughter said, “I feel like someone I used to know has been murdered.”

It may not be a popular sentiment right about now, but forgiveness is the ultimate goal always. Getting there, processing all those feelings, that’s the hardest part. Denial, disbelief, resentment, bitterness, anger, heartbreak, betrayal, disgust (mostly disgust), sadness. Pick your poison. Pick them all. Savor them because they will last a while, regardless of the order in which they are processed. And it is OK to feel that way. It is OK to feel whatever way you feel, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Those men we thought saints but are nothing more than sinners with an illness have left in their wake a cross-generational ripple monumental in scope. If our children’s faith falters entirely, are they not victims, too? Certainly not to the magnitude of those who have been sexually abused, because there’s a significant difference between rape and theft. But the pain that remains for those who have been robbed of their trust – and yes, their faith – is very real.

To Protestant friends: Please don’t judge the rank-and-file Catholics. We don’t understand this any more than you do. We certainly don’t condone it. We are embarrassed by it. We just want it to go away. And we want — and hopefully demand this time — that something be done. Because nothing that has been tried has stuck up to this point. And it is disgraceful. So I would ask for all Protestant friends to pray for their Catholic Christian brothers and sisters. The ones in the pews and mostly certainly the ones at the altar. We need your prayers now more than ever.

To Catholic friends: Do something. Don’t just bellyache and gossip. Show up at the front door of your parish and knock. Hard. And make it known that you want to be part of the change that must come so that you can help save your church. And don’t take no for an answer. If you hear nothing, find another door at another parish and knock louder. If our church is to survive it has to be up to us. It is we who are the church, not the fallen who have let us down in ways that right now are unforgivable.

And pray. A lot. God simply must be there with us to get us all through this. Right? I mean, right? He is, after all, the real reason we answer the peal of the church bells, and he is why we all file in and greet others and smile and wish each other peace and learn about other people’s families and serve together and form friendships and love one another as ourselves. Right?

There will be a lot of empty pews when Catholics walk into their churches these next few weeks, but God will still be there, front and center, waiting for you to come back, like he is every day. He will be mourning with us. He will be crying with us, and he will be shaking his head and maybe even his fist with us. And he will be asking himself what has gone so horribly wrong, and maybe wondering why even he can’t seem to fix it. So we must still walk into our fallible church with our heads high. But even more so, we must walk into our churches so that we do not let down our infallible God. Perhaps this is the hour that he needs to depend on us as much as we depend on him.

Four-legged manna

-jp-

A gentle ocean breeze whispers through the open stained glass. Parishioners file in and sit on wooden pews. Downed kneelers firmly fixed to the floor seem to say ‘pray without ceasing’ to the knees that hit them. Statues of saints populate the altar area, and rows of candles stand like wooden toy soldiers, flickering in the wind off the Atlantic, a block away.

The organist welcomes the congregation, made up mostly of retirees, inviting everyone to join in singing No. 407, “All Are Welcome.” Fr. Scott Euvrard, pastor of Star of the Sea Church, a seaside parish in Salisbury, Massachusetts, processes down the aisle, lectionary in one hand, leash in the other. He bows at the altar, turns, walks to his chair, and lets loose of Lazer, a young, healthy black lab who curls up behind the pastor’s chair, closes his eyes, and sleeps.

Mass has officially begun.

Wait.

What?

A dog? In church?

Well, we did sing ALL are welcome.

Lazer’s not just any dog, though. Recently released after a year in a Massachusetts state prison, Lazer is a therapy animal.

The homily on this day, a day Catholics refer to as the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, is about manna from heaven. The corresponding Gospel reading, from John 6, is the bread of life discourse.

The recurring Scripture passage, though, at this particular parish on this particular Sunday, is from Exodus: “In the morning, a dew lay all about the camp, and when the dew evaporated, there on the surface of the desert were fine flakes like hoarfrost on the ground.”

Manna from heaven, it was, courtesy of the Holy Spirit. Bread for the journey. Food for the soul. Fruit of the vine.

Gifts of the spirit are left for us mortals to help make the unbearable bearable. To give hope to the hopeless and love to the lonely. Gifts that will, to borrow a phrase from Fred Rogers, “smile you into smiling.” Sometimes, perhaps all too often, these gifts can be left on our doorstep, yet we’re too busy to notice, and we step right over them, failing to realize what we’ve been given.

Other gifts of the spirit are more obvious. Like Lazer.

He’s not just any therapy dog. Though he may be Fr. Scott’s constant companion, it’s not the healer that needs healing. But the people Fr. Scott visits often do. So, everywhere the priest goes, Lazer goes. To hospitals, senior centers, to see the homebound, to Mass. Sometimes, Lazer even goes back to prison.

He’s the product of a program run by the state of Massachusetts where offenders serving time train dogs to become therapy animals. When their education is complete, the four-legged students receive their certification, find a home and commence to spreading comfort and joy.

One parishioner we met at Star of the Sea Church told us the congregation loves Lazer. “He’s one of us,” she said. “Fr. Scott loves to talk about him.”

And so he did.

To the downtrodden, service animals bring hope – bread for the journey, nourishment for the soul. And they can smile the weary into smiling.

This story is not completely told, though, without a nod to Fr. Scott, too. Knowing how man’s best friend can bring light to a darkened hospital room or to a prison cell or a lonely room at a retirement village – and then acting on that knowledge, and taking the time to share the warmth of an animal to those who can most benefit from it, that’s a part of the story that quite likely often goes untold. Priests aren’t much on talking about themselves. Especially when all eyes are trained on a 50-pound bundle of slobbery, smiling manna at the end of a red leash.

Pictured: Father Scott Euvrard with Lazer.

 

Honey wagons and assorted know-it-alls

I believe people are basically good. And they want to help.

And then there are people in RV parks. They are basically good, too. And they want to help. But I sometimes would rather they be in their own campsite at certain points of the camping process. Such as when Karen and I pull into our campsite. Nothing draws a crowd faster than a guy with a long camper in a short camp site. (And I think I speak for campers everywhere when I say pull-thru sites are like little get-out-of-jail-free cards from God). Back-in sites have become a sort of playing field for a really bizarre spectator sport.

A reader asked me recently my top suggestions for surviving the kind of trip we’re on. I told her, No. 1, never hike alone. No. 2, expect the unexpected because mechanical failures will and do occur. And 3, people show up in your campsite when you least expect them to, and always when you don’t want them to.

When we pull into a campground we apparently give off a scent, like a dog. It’s not that we can’t back our rig into our campsite. It’s just that everyone else thinks they can do it better and faster. And, not to be judgmental, but I sort of find those people really, really insufferably annoying. Nothing brings out the machismo faster than a man who has sniffed out the opportunity to be a hero — especially when there are others around to watch him look like a hero and me look like a newbie.

You can’t really tell a fixer “Thanks, but I’ve got this,” because he’s got this, too, and his way works better than yours.

MR. EVERYTHINGS
Even more annoying than a fixer is someone who shows up and won’t leave. We’ve had a few of these. One time, a guy was waiting for us in our campsite before we even backed in. Not only does this kind of person want to help get you backed in, he wants to tell you where he’s been, what he’s done, how much he paid for his rig five months ago and how many girlfriends he had in junior high.

“Traded in a little 50-footer with a hot tub and three bedrooms for this big boy,” he said, pointing to his three-story motor home with a deck, a garage and 15 slide outs. “Man, I love retirement. The wife loves it, too (The wife?). Except the camping part of it. So I knew I had to spring for the 100-footer.”

“Great, great. How do you get it under low clearance bridges?”

“Got me one of those brand new, state-of-the-art, Shrinkage Hydraulic Collapse Systems. This bad boy goes as low as some of those Indian Princess pop ups. That was my first unit a lifetime ago. Now I’ve got grandkids and I take them fishing with me and we’ve got sixteen ATVs in the back end so everyone can have a great time, even the wife’s great grandmother.”

“Great, great, well, I think my wife is calling me for dinner. Haven’t had a bite since we got here. Yesterday. DID YOU NOT SEE ME PASS OUT FROM LACK OF FOOD AND INTEREST ABOUT 24 HOURS AGO?”

BLACK TANK NIGHTMARES
Working stiffs like me forced to somehow eke by in a fifth-wheeler are often responsible for things they wouldn’t otherwise be responsible for. Like emptying black tanks. You might have seen the improper emptying of a black tank in the Robin Williams movie “RV” (subtitled “The Life Story of Jimmy Patterson”). I don’t care how sick your second cousin is, prayer is never more needed than right before you pull the lever that opens the black tank.

The campground we are in this week in Connecticut does not allow the personal dumping of black tanks. Twice a week, they pay a woman – yes, a woman (and no, whatever they pay her is not enough) – to come to the campground driving what is called The Honey Wagon. It is her job to pump out sewer systems in the rigs of customers who pay for her services. I hear by day she’s a politician, so when she gets here at night, she’s already up to her elbows in the stuff.

Her visits are preceded by a certain aroma that cuts through the night air. It’s the kind of smell that makes your wife turn to you and say, “Did you…?” And, just as you are about to turn and say, “Hey now it wasn’t me!” out from behind the camper next door speeds Super Honey, riding a Polaris towing the kind of large tank usually reserved for mobile car washers. Except that’s not soapy water in there! She wears plastic gloves and a mask and vaguely resembles some sort of sick super hero from a Marvel movie they haven’t thought of yet. Hopefully.

COULDN’T DO IT WITHOUT MY GATE CREW
So, back to dramatic arrivals. Karen leaves little doubt we have arrived in a new campground.

I couldn’t do it without her unique hand signals, which bring to mind an eight-year-old trying to learn how to guide a 737 in and out of a gate at Southwest Airlines KidsKamp. My favorite hand signal is when she stands right behind the hitch and extends her arm out straight, perpendicular to her body and parallel to the ground, and then closes one eye and mutters something important. I still don’t know what this means.

Since we don’t always use a walkie -talkie system, it’s often necessary for her to use verbal commands such as, “OK, back up now,” and “OK, stop backing up now’ and “You need to turn right.”

Great, I need to turn right, what? The back of the truck? The front of the truck? What!?

And my favorite, “OK, cut your wheels.”

Got it.

I’m just gonna call that know-it-all guy over there who’s just dying to come help save the day, thanks.

 

The son will never forget

By Jimmy Patterson

The Poconos in eastern Pennsylvania are a series of low rolling mountains, streams, waterfalls and woods. It’s a beautiful place often frequented by people from the large urban centers of Philadelphia and New York City. I remember Archie Bunker telling Edith he wanted to take her to the Poconos on a couple of occasions.

 

Friday afternoon, we pulled into an RV park near Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, a highly stroll-able downtown in the heart of the Poconos. Stroudsburg reminds me a little of Fredericksburg, only with less heat, more trees and fewer strollers. It even has a Euro feel to it: there’s a Polish Mass on Sunday afternoon at the local Catholic Church.

 

Our RV Park is more trailer park than vacation stopover. It’s usually easy to differentiate the fulltime parker from the fulltime RVer for any number of reasons. For instance, if there are mattresses and loungers stacked outside the front door of a camper, as if to attain the feel of a sort of makeshift veranda, that’s would be an indication. Another is when some sort of company truck is parked with a camper. Our next-door neighbor for two days this weekend drives such a truck.

 

Karen and I sat outside amid the mild temperatures last evening after pulling in from a week in New Jersey. I looked across at the RV next to us and saw a man’s bare feet and ankles under the underbelly of his rig. He appeared to be standing at the picnic table on the far side of his camper. He seemed to be alone. I could see no one else.

 

There was some type of one-sided conversation occurring. It rose in intensity rather quickly. Soon enough, the man had launched into a full-on verbal assault on this unseen someone. The poor guy on the other end was receiving a relentless bashing, and it soon became obvious that the man at the trailer was talking to his teenage son who had obviously not found a job but apparently hadn’t looked for one either. We learned a lot about the son in a matter of moments. He was a lazy &^%$, and a worthless, no-good loser, and it was time he became a man and got his low-down, good-for-nothing*#@ up off the couch and made himself respectable for a change.

 

There was more. Much more. But by then we had retreated to the inside of our camper. This was no place either of us wanted to be. Words neither of us wanted to hear. Words we would never wish on anyone, even someone we had never met. It was faceless violence. Relentless hatred. The kind of repugnant bravado that sends you running for the nearest shower. The victim may have been unknown and unseen to us, but that did nothing to lessen the impact of the man’s words to anyone within earshot.

 

In a 1995 book, “The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers,” there’s a story about Lauren Tewes, who played Julie on “The Love Boat” eons ago. The actress shared how watching reruns of “Mister Rogers Neighborhood” helped her overcome her cocaine addiction as a young adult. It impacted her because she knew when she turned on those old programs, she had a friend. The book also explains how economically disadvantaged children were often the biggest fans of the “Neighborhood,” because they live in worlds with so much inconsistency. “Mister Rogers Neighborhood” provided a constancy that was comforting. Fred Rogers should be elevated to sainthood for the profound positive effect he has had on countless numbers of not just children but adults as well.

 

Several weeks ago, when we were in Asheville, North Carolina, Karen and I saw “Won’t You Be My Neighbor.” At one point in the film, producers focused on criticisms leveled at Fred Rogers, who firmly believed that all children should be made to feel special because, well, all children are special. Yet his detractors felt that such a belief would reward those children who hadn’t earned praise and shortchange children who really were special. It was a ridiculous argument then and it’s a ridiculous argument now.

 

All children are special and should be afforded respect. Maybe, perish the thought, kids should even be shown more love when they aren’t “deserving” of it. Perhaps that big stone tablet should be rewritten: “Honor Thy Mother and Thy Father” could easily be edited to read “Honor Thy Mother and Thy Father (and Parents, Honor Thy Children, For They Do Not Deserve Your Disrespect, Wrath and Hate, and Are a Direct Reflection of You.)”

 

I don’t know anything about the 18-year-old on the receiving end of his father’s hatred yesterday. My guess is it wasn’t the first time he has had to listen to it. But I do know one thing without ever meeting the kid: he didn’t deserve what he was getting.

 

It’s been almost 50 years now, but I still remember one day confessing to my father about something dumb I had done. My dad was a loving, even-tempered, honorable, caring man. He never spoke ill of anyone, least of all his family or loved ones. But that day, I was on the receiving end of a good talking-to for whatever childhood sin I had committed and of which I was no doubt guilty. When I had finished my confession, dad told me that what I had done was foolish. And he probably sent me to my room for a couple of hours. And he was done.

 

“Foolish.” The word stung. It was the harshest thing dad ever said to me in the 48 years I knew him, before he died nine years ago this week. I told my dad that we had learned at church that the Bible says if you ever call someone a fool, you’ll burn for it. I was genuinely worried for his soul at the moment, even though he had not actually called me a fool. He apologized and said that instead, I had made an “unwise decision.”

 

Point is this: Nearly 50 years later, I still remember that day, that moment. How one word hurt. The words that our neighbor used on his son yesterday may be quickly forgotten by the father who spoke them. But the son? He will never forget.

 

Hi, I’m Bob. I’ll be your host today

by jp

“Welcome to Staunton,” the voice came from behind me.

It was at a meager gathering Thursday, just up the road from this picturesque Virginia downtown, where I was made to feel as welcome as I have felt since we left Texas in March.

I turned around to face the voice.

“Hey, I like your shirt,” I said, responding to the stranger’s greeting. His name was Bob, and he was wearing a George Strait t-shirt and what looked like a NASCAR baseball cap. We talked for a few minutes, Bob welcoming me maybe more times than was necessary, but each time with the same sincerity. A cigarette, ever present, dangled from his mouth when I talked, then perched itself between his first two fingers when he talked.

Bob left time for our conversation to go both ways. He paused and listened when I talked. I did the same with him. It’s a lost art today, this kind of conversation. But don’t get me started. Bob was a friendly, humble man, rich in the things that matter. I thanked him for his welcome, maybe more times than necessary, and he walked away, striking up a conversation with someone else.

I climbed into the truck and drove downtown to meet Karen at a little coffee shop on the east end of Staunton, at the corner of Beverley and Market streets. On the front door of the By & By Coffee Shop was a sign that informed customers that they were all welcome — “We respect women, we value black lives, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, refugees, people of all faiths. We stand with our community,” the sign said, hash-tagging #HATEHASNOBIZHERE as an exclamation point. “ALL are welcome here” the sign reiterated, practically opening itself to me as I walked in. I knew if they were as accepting as their sign indicated, even a wayward Texan might be able to find a little love in the establishment, too.

“Two iced teas,” I ordered, as Karen and I desperately continued our search for temporary remedies to the unrelenting heat we had been met with in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. We found complaining about the heat not only did no good, but also made us feel guilty. We were certainly not the only ones suffering from the high-pressure dome that was lock and loaded over the northeast, raining down brutal summer temps. It was 96 with a feels-like of 107 one day earlier this week in nearby Mint Springs, where our RV is parked — hotter even than Houston that day, for cryin’ out loud. Living in a tin box has made it no cooler.

As I waited for our tea, the man behind the register looked up and greeted his next customer. “Bob!” he said. Yep. George Strait t-shirt wearing, one-man welcoming committee Bob.

I went back outside with our teas and Bob came out to light up a smoke as he waited for his sandwich. He welcomed me to town again. Told me the best way to get around was the big green trolley. “Just costs a quarter every time you get on,” he said, proceeding then to map out all the high points around Staunton. About that time, a big green trolley rolled past us. Bob pointed it out to me to make sure I knew that was the trolley he was talking about.

We talked a bit more, mostly about Staunton, a place he had lived most of his life. They should hire Bob at the chamber and put him to work in the newcomer department. Might as well pay him for what he does so well for free, I thought. He made me forget that President Woodrow Wilson was born here and that the Statler Brothers are not only from here, but the surviving members still live here. Today, I just cared that Bob lives here.

The clerk at the By & By called his name. His sandwich was ready. Before he slipped through the front door, which, as you might imagine, practically flung itself open for him, Bob looked at me, wished me well, and said, ‘Now that you know where we are, maybe you can come back and stay a little longer.” Then he told me to be careful in our travels.

We’ve been fortunate to have experienced a lot of small towns on this little journey, looking for America as we go. Several weeks ago, I stopped trying to find and write stories that I knew would end up feeling forced, choosing – and knowing – that instead, America would reveal herself casually, in her own time. That’s what happened with Bob. In Staunton, Virginia. America revealed herself.

Pictured: Downtown Staunton, Virginia, from Sears Hill.

Dam worry

Pictured: Lake Tahoma Dam, Marion, North Carolina.

 

By Jimmy Patterson

The mountains here in North Carolina are deeper and denser than those in northern Georgia. Beautiful, certainly, but thick to the point of claustrophobic sometimes.

We have been camped in an RV park east of Asheville this week, about ten miles west of the Blue Ridge Parkway, the world’s most famous 469-mile long National Park. Our camper backs up to a stream called Buck Creek. The sound of splashing, flowing water has been ever present, providing, for the most part, a sense of serenity. But I’d be lying if I said a little squirm hasn’t seeped through on occasion.

About a month before we pulled in here, the remnants of a tropical moisture system drifted in and stalled over Georgia and the Carolinas. Large amounts of rain fell on the area where we watch the creek run today.

We are maybe a mile downstream of Lake Tahoma, a small, privately-owned lake penned in by a 90-year-old dam. When the rains came and stayed, the national media alerted America in its typical not-so-subtle fashion that a dam in North Carolina was in “imminent failure” (that dam being the dam we are snuggled up next to). The words “imminent failure” were words first used by a state inspector after learning of mudslides near the structure. Fearing the worst and, as they say, acting out of an abundance of caution, the inspector called for mandatory evacuations of a large area below the dam, all the way to Marion, six or eight miles away. In the days and weeks since, it was determined that the dam was never actually near failure at all. The mudslide that caused the evacuations (there were many small slides, actually) was downstream of the dam and did not affect its structural integrity. But the news people had already called it imminent failure, and some words just can’t be unsaid. So, the public’s fear remained. The psychological damage was done.

The owner of our RV park said people canceled reservations, left early, and slowed his income for a couple of weeks. We made the conscious decision not to change our plans based on the reports that indicated there was never any real threat. Which doesn’t necessarily remove the trepidation completely, especially for anyone who inherited trepidation DNA from his mama. I just have to have faith that the people here in North Carolina are smart enough to tell me if it’s time to scoot. I have no reason to believe otherwise.

As she often does, Karen has left the worry part up to me. She’s not a big worrier. She has for the most part sat stoically, working with her camera and pursuing her other interests. I keep one eye on the creek ahead and another upstream, listening for rumbles, attempting to sense any unusual movement of the earth and watching to make sure no trees suddenly swoop by the back window of our rig in a wall of water. Not that we would have any time to save ourselves if millions of gallons of water suddenly came at us.

The one question that has been bouncing around my silly head this week has been, ‘Can any of us by worrying add a single day to your life?’ Maybe you’ve heard that before. Normally, I would say no, we cannot add a single day to our life by worrying. But, those two words – imminent and failure – when put next to each other in a sentence, do very little to establish anything resembling a sense of security. If they don’t make you blow up your floaties and hug your duckie, nothing will.

At the risk of sounding sacrilegious I’m going to answer yes to the question just this once. If I worry enough to move our camper to higher ground, out of the path of flood waters and mudslides, and then, heaven forbid, the dike crumbles, I’d say I probably added a day to my life, maybe more. I’m certainly not in the business of trying to out-smart or second guess the gospels or their Bearer, I’m just trying to come at it from all angles. Trying to defend worrying which gets some bad cred, for good reason.

Faith without worry can be a tricky deal. You can espouse faith all day. You can cling to it, grow it, nurture it, be steadfast in it, and insist to everybody and God himself that yours is unshakeable. But never ever waver from it? Good luck with that. Set your fifth-wheel up at the foot of a 90-year-old dam with 10 inches of new rain in the lake above and then talk to me about ‘Don’t worry be happy.’

It would have once seemed almost weird to me if you suggested this, but I have found this week that you can actually be apprehensive and calm at the same time. Faith and worry can weave in and out of each other as easy as Snoop Dogg’s dreadlocks. The bigger question is which one will overpower the other. Who’ll win in the end? While faith and doubt can and do co-exist, only one can grow abundantly if both are present in your life.

Questioning faith can and often does nurture faith. Periodic doubts can strengthen it, and make it the unshakable, unbreakable force we’d all like to have when we breathe our last. Like risen bread needs yeast, faith grows healthier with questions, doubt and even a little worry from time to time.

Let go and let God … Give it to God … Don’t worry be happy. Nice platitudes all, but not always realistic when life suddenly comes crashing down around you before you’ve had time to assess and adapt. We can only try our best, based on all reason and on current circumstance, to give it up. To let God. To not worry. To be, maybe not happy, but to just have the ability to breathe normally sometimes.

We have been at this RV park for six nights, and have two remaining. The dam, and my faith, have held. My worries have subsided, my doubts diminished. But I’m keeping my powder dry and my floatie inflated just in case. Anything is possible. And it’s OK to believe that, as long as faith wins in the end.