Choices in the Garden

Green light, red light

There is something about an apple.  More than most other fruits, it has significance beyond its simple self.  

Witness the famous computer company, whose logo identifies the fruit but emphasizes the bite that has been taken.  Ah, the forbidden fruit – right here in your hands.  All the time, demanding your attention.  Directing your day.  Tracking your location.  Listening to your conversation.  Predicting your decisions.  Selling your attention.   Well, maybe there was more truth than intended in their advertising back in the day when they chose that logo.  

Unlike many other fruits, apples are durable.  They do not bruise as easily nor rot as readily, they travel well, and can be kept for longer periods of times and under less controlled circumstances.  Like potatoes and root vegetables, they can be stored in the cellar to provide sustenance through the winter.  

Annually it is part of my autumn routine to visit orchards and buy large quantities of apples.   Right about now, I should be heading west to get a half bushel of eating apples and a half bushel of pie apples from among the earlier varieties to be harvested.  Then, after Veteran’s Day, I drive a bit further and buy a full bushel of my favorite eating apples, plus some more pie apples, that are among the latest varieties to be harvested.  Last year this bushel lasted into March, despite how much Fr. Swink enjoys devouring one on frequent occasion.  

But this year I am not sure what I will do, because there is no apple harvest. None. It was destroyed in late April by a hard frost.  All along the eastern edge of the Appalachian range, some of the finest apple orchards in the country are coming up empty.  

As some people welcome the end of summer and the cooler temperatures of autumn that arrived this week as if commanded by the calendar, it is easy to forget what a long, cold winter and late, cold spring we had this year.  I feared at the time that the stone fruits would suffer, as they often and easily do, and sure enough, peaches plums and cherries were obliterated while we waited in vain for the weather to warm.  But that is more common, unfortunately, as stone fruit trees blossom early and are vulnerable.  

But apples!  MY apples!  What has happened here?  I have already resorted to buying apples from the grocery store, shipped in from God knows where.  I guess they are fine – see the durability of apples, referenced above – but they are not local and they are brutally expensive, especially compared to the price per bushel at the orchard.  What sadness.

Still I connive to find a better option, some other supplier of apple varietals in the bulk and at the price I prefer.  Whether such connivance bear fruit, I do not know.   But the sad fact is that this entire catastrophe was thrust upon us months ago while we were paying attention to other things, pursuing other goals, and yearning for other rewards.  Only now is inflicted the privation that was prepared then.  Cherries were missing in June and peaches in August, but the sting of apples’ absence hits in October and November.  

There is nothing that we can do to change it.   Some friend of mine with whom I shared my lament suggested that there must be something that can be done in the orchard during the freeze to protect the apples, like they do in Florida with the orange crop, spraying them with water that encases the fruit in protective ice.  But we cannot go back to late April and change things, nor does such a method exist anyway.  The organic reality is irreversible and irretrievable.

Like the bite out of that fruit on the logo in everyone’s pocket, there is no going back, no un-doing what long since has been done.  The genie stands surly outside the bottle, preparing new destruction.  Only after time has passed are consequences revealed, most shockingly when the decisions and the actions were our own.  Regrettable results make us rue the day, crying for a do-over that remains out of reach.  

There is something about an apple.  More than most other fruits, it has significance beyond its simple self.  Before and after the bite, it reminds us of sin. 

Monsignor Smith

Deflect artifice

It was the lead story on the paper’s web page today, again.  A ranking bishop in the conference formulated policy imperatives regarding it, again.  And our Archbishop finally told us last week who the keynote speaker at our fall priest’s convocation this November would be: the United States priest expert in it.  

Try as I might, I simply cannot get excited about it.  It was the subject of our new Holy Father’s first encyclical letter.  I confess I made one good try at reading that and did not get very far.   In all the infotainment outlets, the new buzz about it involves words like annihilation – of the human race, that is.  As the meme goes, that escalated quickly.

I would not presume to speak for anybody other than myself, but I think about it as technology, and not even as “a” technology, but rather as a technological development, possibly even an incremental one: the next step along the developmental path.  Yes, even incremental developments have personal and social impact.   

Think of the step from the ability to produce practical, reliable flying machines to safe, regular, accessible passenger air travel.  Sure it makes a difference.  It has made a difference in my life and our world.  Some of its impact has been negative even if we except episodes like 9/11.  Most of its impact has been positive. As a technological project, it is still a work in progress.  Will it expand to space?  Will it be abandoned to reduce use of petroleum products?  Will become ever more affordable, or prohibitively expensive?  Will it ever be perfectly safe?  Will it ever be comfortable?

Our technology for processing data and simulating material reality is growing by leaps and bounds.  The human capacity for artifice and susceptibility to it seem to progress hand in hand.  We suspend disbelief to be entertained, whether by our own elementary school children presenting themselves as George and Martha Washington or Tom Holland swinging through urban canyons on webs that shoot from his cuffs.  Ha ha that was fun.  The entertainment ended, disbelief is once again taken up and is perhaps our best tool.  Virtual reality disappears when the goggles come off and your real work remains still undone.  And artificial intelligence is not and never will be.  Intelligence, that is.  

The best disposition to maintain in the face of the self-aggrandizing and self-exaggerating computation and simulation of information technology now claiming for itself the name of intelligence is, I think, to nurture authentic intelligence.  Read a book, write a letter, paint a picture, and memorize a poem – then compose one yourself.  Sing a lullaby – or the post-Communion hymn in church!  Teach a child to bake cookies or mow the lawn.  Grow a garden, every year.  Play a game or compete in a sport.  Build a bed or a shed.  Get better at something you are already good at.  Be a mom, or a dad, or a friend.  Pay attention to the person in front of you and try to figure out what he will do next.  There is technology in all of that, and real intelligence as well.  

There was a panic a few centuries back about the invention and proliferation of the crossbow.  Yes, it did have an impact and some of that was negative, but then there was Agincourt.  Human genius will always outperform mere technology.  

The more intelligence you nurture in your life, the less susceptible you will be to the siren song of the artificial kind, and the more able you will be to use it and prudently.  Prudence; ah, now there is something we priests could stand to build a convocation around.

Monsignor Smith

 

Safe not sound

Speaking of things that you don’t see coming, one of the worst is when something that you use every day without any problem suddenly functions not at all.  No symptoms of a coming breakdown, no catastrophic impact causing damage, just – bam.  A door daily walked through become a steel wall.

Precisely that is what happened Tuesday when the safe in our sacristy ceased to function.   More accurately, I suppose it was the lock that ceased to function, or rather, ceased to do anything BUT lock.  The dial spins, the combination can be entered, but the tumblers do not tumble into place and the gentle click of the latch opening is never achieved.  

This all happened Tuesday as we were preparing for the afternoon Mass.   Unexpectedly we were cut off from many of the things that we use for Mass: chalice and ciborium, server’s paten and, startlingly, the key to the tabernacle.   Fortunately we could retrieve substitutes of the first three items from the chapel sacristy, and Mass proceeded without incident.  But it was imperative to be careful about the host count because without access to the tabernacle, there is no way to retrieve additional hosts if needed for waiting communicants, nor to repose superfluous hosts after distributing.  Massgoers were a bit unsettled by my obvious “head count” at offertory.

In my experience here, there has never been a problem with the safe.  That reaches back fully twenty years, and possibly twenty-eight.  Only one half of the sticker remained from the locksmith who had last worked on the safe.  Fortunately, we were able to identify him from only the first word of his company name.  The locksmith who returned our call quickly clarified that his dad would have been the last one to visit us, as he had taken over the work ‘only’ twenty-three years ago.

Even as I write, he is in our sacristy tapping and rapping at the unyielding steel door.  Our walk-in safe is the envy of most priests who see it, with room inside for everything from chalices and ciboria to relics, big ol’ monstrances, the spare tabernacle, and cases of altar wine.  Keeping them locked away is vital for different reasons for different items, as some of them are ancient and irreplaceable, simply precious because of their materials, or in all cases except the wine, sacred.  These objects have been consecrated to the worship of God and have held Him Whom we adore.  

Practically speaking, it is a reminder of how thing-centric is our worship, as our God condescends to dwell among us.  From the first moment he needed swaddling clothes and a manger, then eventually dinner and a diaper, the Word become Flesh does not disdain our material encumbrance.  Since the Three Magi arrived and proffered their gifts, the things that point to His identity and are put to His purposes have been costly in their own right.  We give him our best, ideally, so we must take care of things to take care of Him.  For some of these things, we need a safe.

Unfortunately, they are a little TOO safe just now, equally unreachable for purposes divine or dastardly.  Still the reminder is welcome of how vital is the operation of a valiant and venerable (78-year-old!) piece of equipment, and how routinely we become accustomed to flawless function, until one day it doesn’t.

Monsignor Smith

Clear and blue

Out of the clear blue sky.  It’s an expression that means without warning or preliminary indication, something happens that there is no way to anticipate or expect.   

It was a beautiful morning just past eight o’clock when I arrived at my post in the Archbishop’s office.  The volunteer drew my attention to a strange report from New York City and we looked to the television.  There was the shining city with its two towers, one of them inexplicably billowing black smoke from a gaping hole in its side.  Then while I watched a passenger jetliner crossed the screen and punctured the other tower.  Debris flew and more smoke rose against the backdrop of a clear blue sky. 

I crossed the hall to alert the Archbishop, a New Yorker by birth and constitution.  His attention fixed on the events now filling every screen, he was pained and paralyzed for the only time in our long acquaintance.   After the first tower fell, I suggested he take the noon Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine, one of the very few of my suggestions he ever adopted.  

I do not remember when we learned of the attack on the Pentagon, or the plane downed in Pennsylvania.  By the time we all went together to the Basilica we knew that a single horrible attack had landed four devastating blows, and there was no reason to think there might not be more.  

You know how I am about anniversaries, so you will not be surprised that I have had my eye on the approach of this one.  Last week I had a long conversation with the priest friend who was with me and the Archbishop throughout that day, recalling as well our trip together two weeks before to that same city for a baptism and a wedding in the Archbishop’s family.  He introduced us to people and places important in his life, including some that would not survive the attack.   This week I had dinner with former parishioners, still friends, one of whom had been in the Pentagon when the plane hit.  Talking about what we recall of that day and what we did, our understanding at the time and what we know now, how we felt then and what feelings we nurture still, helped prepare me to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary fully and well. 

Two subjective experiences remain clear from that day of objective horrors.   The first is that as the Archbishop read us the homily he had prepared, every fiber of my being wanted to object, but I had already spent my single shot of usefulness in giving advice.  One word still sticks in my craw even these years later: he called what had happened a tragedy.  That is misleading, even wrong.  It was an attack.  It was a crime. It was in every sense literal and actual an atrocity.  Its consequences would indeed be tragic, and they are still playing out today.  It was however no tragedy, but rather a freely chosen evil act.

The other experience I recall with full clarity is that while we went about the rest of that upended day, I made calls to let family know I was okay, and to check on the parish and some friends.  While the Archbishop donated blood at Providence Hospital, I waited pacing outside the doors in front of television crews desperate for something to transmit.  I realized with clarity that somewhere else far away, in many places in fact, there was rejoicing at the same scenes that brought us horror.  Even before I saw the video confirmation, I mentally pictured the dancing in the streets that in fact was juxtaposed with our cities’ boulevards and ballparks, schoolyards and streets filled with demonstrations of grief.  

These are only a few of the concrete recollections that accompany me whenever something calls to my mind the murderous terror attacks of September 11, 2001.  As the quarter-century marker arrives, I bring all this to mind to discover what good God and man have brought from that day of evil, and what other changes for good or ill I can identify.

The cheerful optimism that dominated our vision and expectations of human behavior twenty-five years ago has been schooled by evidence and events sufficient to make us wary of certain types of promises and appreciative of genuine differences among people and cultures.  More has changed than simply airport protocols.  We share not only the skies but also our cities and our streets with people whose categories for good and evil, human and inhuman are not only different from but opposed to ours.  Whatever actions and events erupt from the friction that follows may well shock and dismay us, but it will not come from Out of the clear blue sky.  

Monsignor Smith