Beacons of Light

[dedalus_1947]

“Life is suffering”.
(The First Noble Truth of Buddhism)

“You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the house. So let your light shine before men…”
(Matthew 5:13-16)

So let your light so shine before men
Let your light so shine
So that they might know some kindness again
We all need help to feel fine (let's have some wine!)
(Lyrics from Godspell, “Light Of The World”)

I remember the story going something like this:

It was a late Friday afternoon, with the sun setting quickly on the horizon. Martha, an attractive, silver-haired woman felt a sudden chillness in the air as she slowed her car and brought it to a complete stop. She hadn’t notice the approaching gloom of twilight while traveling swiftly along the interstate highway. Now that her forward momentum had stopped, she finally took note of the fading light of day. Row after row of cars, with glowing brake lights, were stacking up along the lanes, and behind her. No one was moving.
“It must be an accident”, she thought, “to bring all traffic to such a halt. I wonder what happened.”
She punched the car radio buttons, hoping to catch some word of the trouble on the freeway, but nothing was forthcoming from the 24 hour news stations. She took a deep breath, and settled back into her seat. There was no hurry getting home tonight. She had purposely stayed late at school to get ahead of the grades and lesson plans that were due the following week. Her son, Jonathan, had already told her that he would be working late, and not to wait dinner for him. She turned the car radio and the motor off. There was no point burning gas and depleting the battery. Other drivers were doing the same, and soon the freeway became eerily silent. Leaning back in her seat, Martha closed her eyes for a minute, then reached over to the adjoining seat for a prayer book she had tossed there when putting away her briefcase. Multi-colored tags flagged various sections of the book, indicating the prayers and readings she favored, and those planned for her classes next week. Taking up the worn, leather-bound Book of Common Prayer, she found the page she wanted and read the Evening Prayer, from the Daily Office. There was just enough light.
“Let my prayer be set forth in thy sight as the incense, and let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice,” she began. (Psalm 141:2)

She had only gotten to the second page of the rite when she heard the wail of the approaching fire trucks and solitary ambulance. Luckily, this stretch of the freeway had a center dividing lane, which allowed the emergency vehicles to pass quickly and then disappear among the cars ahead. Martha whispered a silent prayer of aid for the rescuers and the people they were helping. It was getting too dark to read without light, and she put down the book. She felt suddenly trapped and powerless, knowing nothing about the accident, the extent of the damage, or how long she would be stranded here. A sudden thought caused her to reach out and open the glove compartment to see if it was still there. Yes, there it was; a child’s, plastic rosary. Jon had placed it in the glove compartment many years ago, after reading that Mother Teresa said the rosary during long cars trips. He never used it, but the beads remained in the car in case he changed his mind. Needing a distraction, and something constructive to do, Martha took out the white, fluorescent rosary, closed her eyes, and fell into the long remembered pattern of prayers.
“In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen” she began, making the sign of the cross with the crucifix. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ His only Son…”

The sudden rumble of car engines being ignited shook her out of the meditative state. She hurriedly finished the Hail Mary she was reciting, and reorganized her thoughts: rosary back in the glove compartment, strap the seat belt, start the motor, look ahead at the road and shift gears. All the drivers around her vehicle seemed to emanate a compelling urgency to get moving. Martha felt a fleeting nostalgia for the 20 or 30 minutes of prayer she had stolen during this experience. The gridlock in front of her melted away quickly, and she focused all of her attention on the drive home.

Six months later, on a Sunday afternoon, Martha answered the telephone at home. A woman’s voice said:
“Hello, my name is Anne Hathaway. I hope I’m not disturbing you, but I’m trying to locate someone. Does the owner of a vehicle with the license plate letters C-H-U-Z-E live at this number?”
“Why yes”, Martha replied, momentarily confused by the odd greeting and question. Sensing no ill will in the woman’s softly, hesitant voice or manner, she found herself curious and wanting to help. “That’s part of my license plate, CHUZE LIFE”.
“Oh my God” exclaimed the woman, on the other end of the telephone connection, “I’ve found you!”
For the next 30 minutes, the stranger recounted her story and the reason she had been searching for Martha.

Six months before, she was involved in a near fatal car accident on the 118 Freeway. She had no memories of the accident or the sequence of events that led to it. The only thing she remembered was a sensation of physically floating up and away from her car, and the scattered auto parts and debris around it. It was dark; so dark that she soon lost sight of her car. A choking fear rose up in her as she realized that the fading freeway was the only anchor to reality in the darkness that was engulfing her. Then she saw the light. It looked like the arc lights of her youth, the beams that once shot into the night sky, announcing the premiere of blockbuster movies or the grand opening of huge department stores. Only this was a single, solitary pillar of light shooting into the sullen blackness. She struggled towards that beam with the desperation of a fatigued swimmer, reaching for a lone buoy, in the vastness of a stormy sea. When she arrived at the beacon of light, she followed it down to its source on the freeway. The light was coming from a solitary car, and the only thing she saw was a license plate with the letters C-H-U-Z-E. It was then that she heard a voice in her head say “It is not your time”, and she lost consciousness. They told her later that she was in a coma for two weeks. She spent 2 more months in the hospital recovering and recuperating. The only thing she remembered from the accident was the license plate and the overwhelming certainty that the pillar of light had been her only tether to life. This conviction was so compelling that her family and friends finally surrendered to her pleas for assistance, and they supported her quest to locate the car in her vision. Through a circuitous connection with a former FBI agent and a director of a local Department of Motor Vehicles, she was able to find Martha.
“I just want to say thank you” she said at the conclusion of her tale, “for showing me the way home”.
“That is an amazing story”, Martha said. “I remember the accident on the 118, but not the light”.
“That’s okay”, the stranger said gently. “I didn’t expect you to understand. I just wanted to say Thank You. You see, I believe you were the light guiding me home. You are the beacon of light in the darkness”.

I heard that story on Leap Day, February 29, 2008, at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress in Anaheim, California. My first instinct was to scoff and dismiss it as just one more tale of a near death experience - but something stopped me. The context of this story gave me pause, and a personal association helped me make a connection that gave it relevance.

I was sitting in a large meeting room in the Convention Center, listening to Paula D’Arcy , a Catholic psychoanalyst and spiritual director, speaking on “The Heaven before us”. The guiding principle of the talk came from Natalie Goldberg’s belief, that writing is hard and dangerous, but the writer must leap into the act of creation without thought or hesitation. Likewise, D’Arcy believed that Life is hard and dangerous, and fraught with perils, but one still needs to participate and ACT in it, to see and experience Heaven (or The Kingdom of God) on Earth. She gave “10 Rules of the Road” to navigate this dangerous life (which can be Heaven on Earth). What most affected me was her story of the car accident and the light. She mentioned it while elaborating on Rule Number 1: Very few things REALLY matter; and we need to know the difference between what Urgent is, and what is simply important. This may sound simple, but it is hard to know the difference. Fortunately, D’Arcy added, there are people in our lives, and in the world, who can help us in our discernment, if we recognize them, and allow them to help. It was her contention that these individuals are generators of illumination, clarity, and hope. People who seem to broadcast a tangible energy we cannot perceive with our optical senses. They are beacons of light and positive power. The account of Martha, her prayers, and the light she emitted was meant to illustrate this point. However, just as I was ready to dismiss this fanciful New Age notion, I thought of Mary Killmond. I do not know a person who has dealt with more sorrows and the painful vagaries of life than Mary. Yet, she is one of the friendliest, most fearless, and caring women I have ever met. I consider myself lucky to know her, and blessed to have her as a friend. She could easily have been the Martha in the story.

I was first introduced to Mary as my son’s 5^th grade Math teacher. She was the only elementary school teacher who kept his attention and seriously challenged him in Math. She accomplished this task, not by charm or demonstrating mathematical superiority, but by intuitively stimulating his curiosity and unique talents to solve problems - all types of problems. She had also just suffered the loss of her son in an auto accident. I learned more about her engaging teaching styles from my wife, Kathleen, who was the 8^th grade teacher at the same school. They became well acquainted while working on two co-teaching projects one year, a rainforest unit in Science, and a reenactment of the Stations of the Cross . I managed to watch this dramatization of the passion of Christ on Holy Thursday, in 1991. It involved 30 students narrating and acting out the 14 tableaux of this devotional Catholic ritual. There was something so innocent and faithful in the children’s depiction of Christ’s sacrifice and death, that I experienced a new clarity of His redemptive message of love and forgiveness. I never forgot it. Kathy and Mary forged a remarkable friendship. They were teachers, colleagues, and mothers, with similar backgrounds, interests, and acquaintances (they both attended Mount St. Mary’s College, and knew many of the same priests and nuns); and over time, becoming something akin to sisters.

To be honest, in the early stages of our relationship, I found Mary a little difficult to appreciate. She was so passionate and energetic in her convictions, that her thoughts sometimes got ahead of her words and I’d lose her. Too often in those days, I only pretended to listen. I came to know Mary best through her husband, Frank Killmond. He was very easy going, reasonable, and funny. He had a wry sense of humor and a twinkle in his eye that captivated me from first meeting. He also gave off some Hollywood glamour as a working character actor, with an ongoing role in a T.V. Soap Opera. Frank had incredible patience, and the ability to listen to Mary and connect the dots of her non-linear meanderings and explanations. He was the perfect lens through which to see Mary, and understand her logic and enthusiasm. His love for her, made her real to me. They were the parents of a large family of eight, 4 girls and 3 remaining boys. However, by the time we came to know Mary and Frank, they were down to their last three children at home, Virginia in high school, and Eddie and John in grade school. In those early years, I kept myself detached, and a bit aloof from this raucous family of brothers, sisters, teachers, soldiers, merchants, actors, film and media developers, and students. I let Kathy be the primary emotional connection and conduit. I rationalized that they were primarily Kathy’s friends.  She and Mary would go on retreats, conferences, and vacations together, sometimes taking the younger boys (Eddie and John) along with our own children, Prisa and Tonito. This comfortable balance was best typified by occasional Friday get-togethers. Mary and Frank, accompanied by Eddie and John, would come over on a Friday, for a casual dinner of pizza, hamburgers, or hot dogs (depending on whim or convenience). We would talk, laugh, and discuss the educational progress, maturing, and juvenile antics of our children.  One evening Frank was talking about an annoying cyst on his neck -- and nine months later he was dead of cancer. It was as unexpected and incomprehensible as if he had gone up the street to buy a bag of charcoal briquettes for the barbeque and never returned. We were all left with a void of incompleteness that never filled in the months and years that followed his departure.

As I watched Mary dealing with Frank’s illness, his prognosis, and his treatments, I could not fathom how she managed to breathe, eat, teach, raise her boys, and continue living. Her son’s death had been a sudden, 3 A.M. wakeup visit by police officers announcing his fatal car accident, but now she was cast in, what seemed to me, a slow-motion, shadow-play of death, that would inexorably extinguish a life too soon. At first, I ascribed her resiliency to a mother’s inertia of always moving forward, toward necessary, short-term goals: getting grades done, planning dinner, picking up John, driving Frank to the doctor, praying, and writing in her journal. It wasn’t until one Friday evening, accompanied only by Eddie and John (because Frank was investigating a cure in Mexico), that Mary’s light finally penetrated my denseness. She had escaped the family room filled with children, pizza, and laughter to recover a forgotten item from her purse in the living room. When she did not return, I peeked in to investigate. There she was, standing alone, in a sliver of light in the semi-darkened room. Slump-shouldered and forlorn, Mary looked tired and defeated. I felt compelled to walk up to her, place my hand on her shoulder, and ask, “Mary, are you all right?”
She looked up at me with the sad smile and asked, “Will you hug me, Tony?”
“Sure” I replied, matter-of-factly, cradling her in my arms. She gave my back a momentary squeeze of appreciation, then pushed her face into my chest, and smothered a series of muted cries into my sweater. I held her in confused silence, trying to ride out the rhythm of her sobs and her tears. The force of so much pent-up emotion exploding outward stunned me, but I just held her. I could think of no more practical action. Eventually, Kathy, searching to find where we had gone, found us in the living room. Raising my brows and shooting her a look of panic, I caught her silent attention.
“I don’t know what is happening; and I don’t know what I’m doing!” I telepathically shouted, in a wide-eyed plea for help.
Kathy simply nodded and motioned for me to continue holding and rocking Mary. Without a sound, she carefully retraced her steps behind Mary, and left the room. She stayed just out of sight down the hallway, making sure that the children did not wander in and find us. After an eternity of tears, Mary’s sobbing breaths became quieter and more regular.
“Thank you for holding me”, she said, after expending a long breath. “You are so solid and healthy, that it reminded me of how Frank used to feel. I couldn’t hold it in. I’m sorry for being such a baby. You don’t have to keep holding me”.
“That’s alright Mary”, I replied, not letting go. “I don’t mind. I’ll hold you as long as you want”.

In the days that followed, Mary’s hug became a blinding epiphany for me. I had always been wary of getting involved in the emotional maelstrom I imagined would descend on Mary’s family as Frank’s condition worsened. However, that hug was the only request Mary ever made of me. She and her children never placed an emotional obligation or burden on anyone. They lived with Frank’s illness and dying with such grace and courage that I was shamed by my baseless apprehensions of being inconvenienced and put-upon. My own bitter tears came when I finally recounted the experience to Kathy, and realized how selfish and miserly I had been. Who helped whom with that hug? I’ve come to believe that Mary gave me a priceless gift that night. She let me see her private veil of tears as she stuggled in her roles of mother, wife, and teacher. After that evening, all my subsequent actions and responses to Mary, Frank, and their children, were honest and freely given. I grew to love them.

D’Arcy’s story struck a chord with me on Leap Day, and her “Rules of the Road” made sense. Life is dangerous, and it is filled with suffering, but it can be a wondrous adventure and a glorious experience, if we have the eyes to see it. We also can’t navigate this difficult journey through life alone; we need help, guidance, and love. I really believe that there are selfless and courageous people who are generators of illumination, clarity, and hope, and they give off a light that we cannot see within our spectrum of vision. I know such people. Mary is my immediate candidate, but I have others: Kathy, Prisa, Sister Marilyn, Magda, Kandy, Marty, Jim Clem…. People who seem to glow if you turn off the light; people I can find in the darkness and loneliness of my fears and despair; people who can always guide me toward the light.