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jtq1844 · 5 years ago

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One day into this and I’m already behind ...

Where did the day go? So much for taking this opportunity to build in some writing discipline into my life. I actually have a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Antioch University -- Los Angeles, 2017). It started out as “an external goal” in 2015, something to try after we moved as empty-nesters up to Washington State from Santa Cruz. The program is “low residency,” meaning it is mostly online. I had had a few stories published already, so I had reason to think it was doable. I like story-telling. I like writing. What I discovered was that, while I have some writing competency, I don’t exactly have a passion for it.

Here is one of the CNF essays from my official portfolio to amuse you until I compose a more heartfelt and informative post for tomorrow … er, I mean, today … um. You know what I mean.

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Sister Clorina, Saint Blaise and Doubting Thomas by Jean Tschohl Quinn

It can take years to come to an understanding about something. Alternatively, an understanding can barrel into consciousness like a grand and glorious epiphanic elephant. Sometimes, both happens. I love paradox. I adore the celestial AND. It is in this sort of epiphany, decades in the making, that I found Bahá'u'lláh.

Sister Clorina hated me. No. That’s too strong. She simply did not like any girls not named Mary. She didn’t like me in particular because she had suddenly been “demoted” to second grade from fourth grade where my sister Mary was -- sweet, clever, pious and faithful. How could I compete? My best friend then was named Mary too. Mary Wirhanowicz was also sweet, clever, pious and faithful. I hold no grudge against the average Mary. They’ve got the whole Blessed Virgin Mother expectation thing to deal with and had no choice in the matter because that was their collective given name. It is, apparently, a lot of pressure. There is the occasional exception of the BVM standard when there are multiple Marys in a single classroom. Some of them get an out if they had, say, a younger sibling who called them something else and the teacher approved for clarity’s sake. One of my grandmothers was one of those. There were several Mary’s in her one-room schoolhouse in Nova Scotia. Her younger brothers and sisters called her Mayme already and so she was dubbed in the classroom and life in general. To this day, I consider her the sanest person I’ve ever met. However, in my second grade classroom, Sister Clorina felt she had reason to suspect me as nefarious. First, I was not named Mary. Second, I was “philosophical.”

Her move down to second grade was precipitated by Sister Marie Madison’s hasty withdrawal from the convent life after only a month with our class. We were informed that we had simply “driven her crazy.” Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. (That’s not quite accurate; it was post-Vatican-II. We didn’t actually learn any Latin.) The girls of the class all knew the blame rested solely on the antics of Vince Wederath, Brian Doherty, and Eddie Marx. They were the bad boys. Maybe Tim Relihan too. We were sure of it. Twelve or so years after the fact, I bumped into Eddie on a bus as I headed home from college for a weekend of free laundry and food. He was still proud of his part in the good sister’s loss of faith. We choose our triumphs; this apparently was one of Eddie’s.

Sister Clorina emanated a stern energy. I cannot tell you whether she was tall or short from my second-grader memory, but I do recall her immense energy. Sometimes, she’d fill in on the organ at Mass when the ridiculously cherubic Sister Acquitaine was overwrought or under the weather. Sister Acquitaine was the music teacher. She felt my brother Kevin’s musical talent was extraordinary -- it is – and so she kept him in at recess for violin lessons because we already had a violin that Grampa Hanson had picked up at St. Vinnie’s for $7 in 1967. Kevin did not like missing recess. He abandoned the violin at his earliest possible convenience. I still have and play that violin, mainly because no one else had a use for it. I have always felt that I have a right only to that which is of no use to anyone else. It’s a youngest child thing. In second grade, I even went so far as to claim my favorite color as moss green because I felt sorry for it.

In any case, Sister Clorina as a substitute organist kept the tempo “up” much to the consternation of the older folks. My family liked it that way; it was zippy. She would shout over her shoulder, “Hymn number 8.” Only I thought she was saying “Hit number 8” like Casey Kasem might, so I thought we were going to sing Winchester Cathedral or Last Train to Clarksville depending on the week. I somehow knew never to expect Wild Thing.

I had high hopes as Sister Clorina glowered over us in the hall outside the classroom. I reached for her hand, trying to be the brown-noser I knew myself to be. She sniffed and tucked her arm inside her surplus. Her disdain for me was immediate.

First grade had been a long line of substitute teachers after Mrs. Conti-Morgan left to give birth after an entirely crabby last month. She and Mrs. Lambert, a squat dynamic storyteller, in the fifth grade were the only lay teachers in the school. Second grade looked like the beginning of a whole new world. I was finally going to be close enough to a nun to touch one.

After Sister Marie Madison bailed on us in the second-grade, I suspect Sister Clorina took the move from her already beloved fourth grade class to our clearly evil second grade as a demotion. The smaller four and fifth grade classes would be combined with the incredible Mrs. Lambert at the helm. My sister Mary was immediately named co-chair with Mrs. Lambert of their mutual admiration society. Mary has that mysterious charm that immediately made her teacher’s pet. Every time.

My year with Sister Clorina should have been a good one. She did Science. We studied the classic simple machines: lever, incline plane, screw, pulley, wedge, and wheel and axle. She even pointed out that a screw is really just an incline plane wrapped around a pivot point. This was good stuff. We learned about meteorology and taxonomy. Why wasn’t it working? For one thing, she had no joy once Mary Wirhanowicz got really sick and was gone for weeks. I brought homework to Mary and back to school regularly. Did I get any credit for helping the BVM wannabe? No I did not. Looking for credit is always a sure way to not get any. I was dead last in the rankings of teacher’s pet, even behind Renee Kucze and she NEVER adhered to the dress code.

Mary eventually recovered and returned to class. My only hope was merit by association. No luck. Christmas rolled around and the requisite study of the Nativity. We learned about the Magi, those astrologers from the East. The question was obvious, so I asked it, “If they understood how important Jesus was before He was even born, shouldn’t we be studying their Religion?” Sister Clorina never called on me again.

Second grade crawled on. I was dying to ask about the blessing of the throats on Saint Blaise Day, February 3, but I couldn’t ask Sister Clorina. I thought the hubbub was kind of cool -- how we’d line up and have blest candles criss-crossed about our necks with a little prayer for health offered – but still didn’t understand it. My mom, who was much more informed and cynical than I could have realized then, knew a little about it. One of the miracles attributed to Saint Blaise was miraculously saving someone from choking. His “day” was the day after Candlemas, February 2, when families traditionally brought in all their candles to be sanctified.

“While this is completely pointless in the 20th century,” she postulated, “imagine what candles meant to a family three hundred, five hundred, seven hundred years ago.” Having them blest would be a prudent gesture to Christians throughout Old Europe and the Byzantine Empire, she hoped I would agree. In my limited comprehension, however, I continued to attempt reconciliation of all of this with Groundhog Day. Maybe the flicker of candles cast interesting shadows on any groundhogs popping out of holes on the same day.

By Lent, I knew better than to ask questions. During the required Tuesday-after-school Stations of the Cross, I languished with questions. It’s not three days between the afternoon of Good Friday and dawn of Easter Sunday. It’s two. Much later, I learned that the Jewish day starts at sundown, so it was definitely only two days. I did not dare ask. And the renaming of Simon to Peter, the rock. What was that about? That was a whole lot of palaver over one little verse and the power that Saul/Paul grabbed anyway. I didn’t get it and couldn’t ask.

At Pentecost, I remember sitting amiably in the pew, gently kicking at the kneeler after the Gospel Reading, followed by a rambling homily about Doubting Thomas. He misses a visit from the post-Resurrection Christ and demands physical proof. Christ does come to revisit and offers Thomas a chance to “probe the nail holes.” Thomas believes even though there’s no record of him poking his fingers anywhere – seriously not in a single one of the four Gospels -- just being with Him again is sufficient. Christ then adds “blessed are they that have not seen but still believe.”

Yes, I committed to myself – kick, kick, kick -- I will never be like Doubting Thomas, needing proof like that. To this day, I have never witnessed any firsthand wowza moment. Some friends of mine have hosted these remarkable, spiritual ongoing events where miracles of joy, epiphany and synchronicity are a regular occurrence for years. Long-lost friends reunite. Extraordinary fund-raising. Mysterious healings. You name it. Whenever I show up, it’s invariably an “off night.” My friend who has witnessed it all invariably shrugs and says, “I don’t know what happened this time. Maybe it was the traffic.” I trust their reality. I have to, because I wasn’t there.

I was still mindlessly kicking the kneeler. Why didn’t they recognize Christ as Jesus when meeting Him after the Resurrection? Seriously, they don’t recognize Him at first. Why would that be? What was the big deal about a physical resurrection anyway? The Old Testament was full of them. I could get the importance of a spiritual one – I thought: Peter … Rock … denied Him and the hiding … rock rolled away … blah, blah, blah … Didn’t Jesus call His followers His body? I was not about to ask questions. The symbolism worked so much better than literal story. Don’t ask; don’t tell. Just get through second grade.

By the end of that year, Father Podolak, that gentle, rambling soul who would eventually preside over my wedding years later, announced that the school would be closing at June. My sister and I were devastated. My brothers and older sisters were already going off to junior high and senior high school, mercifully saved from attending more Catholic school by the cost of tuition times six. Mary and I lay in bed with the blankets kicked off, feeling entombed by the muggy heaviness of Wisconsin in the summer bemoaning our fate, a public school education with their loose morals and strange ways. Of this we were sure. No potentially free music lessons from Sister Acquitaine; no exciting tales about WWI in Italy from Mrs. Lambert; no stern preparation for junior high from Sister Rhodelia whose great contribution to our family was her encouragement to my parents that my shy, nervous, older sister Jackie would achieve every regular thing, just in her own time. We were off to public school and weekly Catholic CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. I kid you not).

How wrong we were! At the public school, we got free music lessons on any instrument we chose from hip young musicians; one for band instruments, the other for strings (my choice, obviously). And Mrs. Grossman taught us singing. She really liked how Mary (either one) and I sang together. By the following Christmas, my sister now a fifth grader and I a third grader sang in front of an audience of hundreds a harmonized duet of Mel Torme’s A Christmas Song. Afterwards Brian Doherty spoke directly to me, probably the only time he ever did, “You have guts. Double guts.” Respect. I don’t remember seeing him after that.

We also had a regular dedicated art teacher, Miss Sanford. She got a nose job the following summer and nobody recognized her when she returned. The best part was, my third grade teacher, Miss Nawrocki. She looked like a Barbie doll. She wore wigs of different colors and lengths. She got married halfway through the year and became Mrs. Raniewicz. Dang. We had just conquered spelling capital-N A W R O C K I. She directed a class musical. I had lunch with her a couple of years ago. She is still awesome, although significantly shorter than I thought. Public school was fine. Better than fine. It was great. To heck with you, Sister Clorina.

Around ninth grade, Confirmation rolled around. It was time for me to publicly commit to God and His Church, whatever that meant. Among the somewhat arbitrary options for going through a Catholic Confirmation is taking a new name. It has little or no intrinsic meaning within Western cultures, but the vestigial tradition hangs on. My 15-year-old self was interested in saving the world by becoming a medical doctor – didn’t happen: boys, booze, and a reading disability derailed that vague idea during the first semester of college – so I chose the name “Blaise” as my Confirmation name. I had mistakenly thought he was the patron saint of physicians. I was a piss-poor researcher back then too. So many of his miracles had to do with healing, particularly having to do with throat ailments and choking. Who am I kidding? I claimed the name Blaise because the choice was due the week after the whole Candlemas/Saint Blaise weirdness -- exactly forty days after Christmas. What was this thing with forty days anyway?  Noah in the Ark, Jesus in the desert, Buddha under the Bodi Tree, the Prophet Mohammad in a cave.  There’s Lent.  There are periods of mourning, of fasting or of thanksgiving in most belief systems.  

In any case, my choice of Blaise, a male name, upset a fair few people, so I had to write a couple of letters to some persnickety council of some kind. The request was okayed … with reservations. The actual Confirmation was forgettable other than choir director being in a car accident on the way there, so the choir – which included my mother, my sister Mary, Mary Wirhanowicz and me – had to wing it.

“So why was the name Blaise so important to you?” Father Podolak asked me months later.

“Well, if this spirituality stuff doesn’t work out, ‘Blaze’ is a good name for a stripper.” The words were out of my mouth before I ran them through my brain. I kept walking.

The next time I saw Fr. P, he said, “Jean, do you know how we make holy water?”

“You bless it?” I stammered.

“No, you boil the Hell out of it.” He smiled apologetically and gently clarified, “That was a joke.”

I chatted with a priest at a wedding I was hired to sing for a few years later, I mentioned the parish I grew up in. The priest said, “Ah! Bill Podolak, a kind man.”

“Yes, indeed.” I was running out of things to say.

“… not a dynamic speaker.”

“No, indeed.” We laughed, all too cruelly I believe.

In spite of my bad research skills, Saint Blaise continues to intrigue me. Having been martyred by being beaten to death with iron combs used for wool combing and carding, Saint Blaise has since been associated with any trade having to do with wool since the Middle Ages, not the healing arts. So, after all the hubbub about me picking a male saint’s name, perhaps it works for me. After all, what is my essay-writing but glorified wool-gathering?

The year after my Confirmation, I lived in Tunisia through a foreign exchange program the same summer that Monty Python’s Flying Circus filmed Life of Brian a mere 100 kilometers away. I did not find out until just after my return to the US, by watching an episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Eric Idle. His monologue was about the long, sad love songs Tunisians sing with such relish and the ubiquity of jasmine there. Mr. Idle’s monologue went over like a fart in church as the saying goes. My family, however, laughed spasmodically as they recalled the similar stories from my letters home. Dad with his ever-present bowl of popcorn balanced on his chest, fell off the couch chortling. Mr. Idle’s underappreciated monologue notwithstanding, my summer in Tunisia changed my perceptions of just about everything. I had lived with a Moslem family in a Moslem neighborhood in a Moslem village. They valued education and kindness, respect and humor, the individual and the collective. The child peeking out of the doorway to see the American girl may have looked like an advertisement for C.A.R.E., but I came to know that her family loved her abundantly, fed her regularly if frugally, and had dreams and hopes for her. Neshua, the daughter of my host family closest to my age, and I were invited to several homes. Some of those invitations were offered because I was a curiosity to the village. In most of the humbler homes, there was a carpet in the works, a large frame taking up a wall in their main living space. A color plot hung taped to one of the loom’s posts. I learned to knot and trim the wool according to the plot, to shift the heddle and weft shuttle, to tamp work with the kleleh to compact the threads. We sat together, partly in fellowship, partly to contribute to the household. One little girl elbowed her way next to me knotting two to my one and announce that she would teach me the Arabic alphabet. “C’est très important” for me to learn how to read Arabic. I never did, except for “Coca-Cola” which I suspect had more to do with it being on large red billboards.

I was quite full of myself. Eventually the lessons of that summer, about the oneness of Religion, not the Arabic alphabet, sunk in. No longer would the coat of we’re-right/they’re-wrong Christianity fit me properly.

Eventually, I was off to college where at some point I made out with a guy who decided to become a priest. I think there may be something more to process about that. Maybe not. I ended up eventually working in Washington DC and met my future husband Mike at a Trivial Pursuit party in the apartment complex we both lived in. We were both Arabic-speaking (although mine was pretty patchy), left-handed (which has its own complications in Middle Eastern countries), green-eyed Catholics. It was Kismet. Oh, and we both preferred to drink milk with pizza. Like I said, Kismet. We went through all the Catholic wedding hoops and started our family when I got pushed onto a spiritual journey by a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses. While the JW logic never worked for me, I will forever be grateful to Betty and LaVonne for starting me on the journey. Here I will skip chapters full of synchronicities that only Baha’is would find amusing, we attended some meetings referred to as Firesides after moving to San Jose, California a few years later.

The speaker one evening expounded on the subject of Progressive Revelation. In brief, Progressive Revelation encompasses the idea that Religion is unfolding over time as humanity becomes ready for a fuller understanding of the true nature of Reality. The speaker went on to offer examples of how Judaism begot Christianity and primarily affected Europe in its initial reach and development. Likewise, Hinduism begot Buddhism which moved out to Asia. Islam is also Abrahamic but was couched in Zoroastrian customs as well. It spread into North Africa, the Middle East, Oceania. The Baha’i Faith was revealed just as the world needed to start thinking globally, in the mid-19th century. Any corruption of Religion has to do with mankind messing with it, not with the purity of the original Message. This made some sense to me, but I didn’t know anything about Zoroaster. The speaker recognized my raised eyebrow-of-confusion and explained.

The moment the speaker explained that the primary understanding of Zoroastrianism in the West would be the Zodiac. He also mentioned that the priesthood was referred to as the Magi, as in the “astrologers from the East.” In that moment, all the disparate thoughts from the time I was seven onward coalesced in my mind’s eye like a jigsaw puzzle completing itself. I wiggled in my seat in excitement, trying not to disturb the tiny middle-aged woman of Asian descent or the black man next to me who had fallen asleep. He was snoring full out and no one was perturbed by it. His wife, a white woman at least a head taller than he was, later explained that he had had a stroke during brain surgery a few years before and often fell asleep. The oneness of God, the oneness of Humanity, the oneness of Religion all made sense to me. In that blink of an eye, I saw the interlocking of fact and legend, of the Magi and the Baby, of tradition and skepticism. I was back with Sister Clorina, Saint Blaise, and my family in Tunisia.

It was both in an instant and over the course of my lifetime up to that point that I came to this understanding. A few weeks after that night, Mike and I together declared our Faith in Bahá'u'lláh, that is to say, became adherents to the Baha'i Faith. We have found our lives infinitely richer because of that choice, so have our children (so they tell me). It is not easy to always keep in mind that each and every person that exists or did exist or will exist is unique and beloved by God, or that our individual Free Wills can send us in all different directions, or that "This is the changeless Faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future" as Bahá'u'lláh says. In fact, it's mostly challenging. Building Heaven on Earth is not for sissies. However, I know it is the right thing for me to pursue.

I still do not get my faith confirmed by fantastical measures. I’d love to see a crowd of people collectively gung their foreheads with the heels of their hands that the oneness of Humanity is a fact and the work it will take for every person to feel loved and beloved as the family we are will be worth the effort and sacrifice. I’d love to see someone healed miraculously. I still get the sense that I won't ever witness events like that first hand.

Occasionally, I do witness people who die with grace or see a smile generated from a purely motivated kindness perpetrated on an unsuspecting grump. It is things like that -- tiny, lovely indications that my spiritual path is worth toddling upon – with which I chose to be satisfied. I promised myself so long ago that it would be enough.

Sister Clorina was only in my life for six months over fifty years ago. She still pops into my head, usually when I am accused of being “too sensitive” about something. I’d love to prove to you that she’s not important to me now, but you’ll just have to take that on faith.

#Tunisia #saintblaise #doubtingthomas #bahai #baha'u'llah #SisterClorina

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