DURING
THE TIME
OF TWENTY PIES
Maggie
Padilla brings
fresh tamales, Maria brings
flan before leaving for Portland. Rosalie Tompkins joins our family
this Thanksgiving, we call her Effie when it’s just Karen and me.
The Thanksgiving/Blessingway table remains set. That’s Lucille
Clifton beside Ms Tompkins—both born in 1936. We have
family, and we set places for all of you. And there is Lefse. Well,
there was lefse. Plenty of everything else. Oh! That’s an El
Salvadoran cross hanging from the lamp. Thanks so much for being a
part of our journey, this
Blessingway.
*
This
all began during the Time of the Twenty Pies.
*
--for Pastor Ron Moen
This
is very good, astute. But, of course, you would get the right
questions from this, along with, "either way."
Some
back-story: After the first several trips, may it was only one,
too--to El Salvador, but when I was beginning to search out the
essence of Ignacio Ellacuria and Jon Sobrino, from El
Salvador--essence, not biography--I came across, I think, O memory!
maybe Ellacuria's name on a Website in Seattle, that led me to
Marshall. That was after walking summer streets in Guadalajara, and a
storefront study center with Father Ignacio Ellacuria’s name on the
window. One more blustery gate. And then the Lutheran pastor in West
Seattle. Prayer. Vestments. Cursing. Laughter. Large framed portrait
of Luther. And Kierkegaard.
At
some point, I just turned the camera on. At some point, his
Kierkegaard project opened. Pastor Ron Marshall. Gateway to the
father story. The Kierkegaard sculpture in Seattle. My twenty dollar
bit part. And my own sketchy, but non-context version of Kierkegaard.
With some soul-vision on my part. A James Joyce-teacher-novelist,
blues-teacher, who I loved, and who didn't survive, a Baptist son,
son of a Baptist teacher, half-catatonic poet, talking of Works of
Love/Fear and Trembling. 1970. Some two decades later, reading Works
of Love, Abraham and Isaac, I take the journey to a monastery playing
Abraham, carrying the son. Camping and praying. Trappist monastery,
my brain laced with Merton/Fear and Trembling/Works of
Love/Kierkegaard. Background. Carrying the camera into West Seattle.
Listening. Talk of Luther. Talk of Kierkegaard. Mixed. Mixed like
music. Had we met yet? Pastor Ron Moen, had we met yet? Dunno. Not
chronological. When did I read Kierkegaard? Of course, I had been
with the Catholics as early as 1975. And Sigmar from Central
Lutheran. 1971. Sigmar. And confirmation from Olin Nordsletten in
North Seattle, 1960. Me. A country boy out of North Dakota. Joseph
Sittler, come from you, Ron: You need a bigger god.
1966.
1967. 1968. Pretty big gods, those years. Karen. Panama. Viet Nam.
Tet. Med-Evac. Poetry. There were poets before there were seminaries.
The long apprenticeship. Poetry called, but what is a poem. Christ.
The vows. Vows taken. When the Christians came in and destroyed the
temples, building over them, on top of them, the poets, who had sat
by kings, as fools as much as seers, were displaced, like the geese
surrounding our housing development. Unhoused, but in formation.
A man sat before my question, talked of the father. The camera running. On his deathbed, the father and
the son before him, the father asking. What can I do for
you as I die? Gift me the complete Kierkegaard Notebooks. That
fragment. Something like that. unquestionably authentic. Came to
Christ or Christ to him? But beautiful. Beautiful either way.
Blessingway
beautiful. But beautiful, a phrase come to Geoff Dyer, through his
book, But Beautiful, A Book about Jazz. A woman listening to a jazz
man's horn. A saxophone. Banned instrument. Blessingway, centerpiece
of Navajo religion. Common man. Common in Quincy, Ron Moen.
The jail cell. The open door. Johnny Cash. Merle Haggard. Sam Cooke's
last mile of the way. Being here. William Blake. Jesus. Mind-forg'd
manacles. London. Open carry. Common man? Or, was it, Wanted Man!
Masked.
The
dangerous profession. Poetry. Dangerous? As Kierkegaard echoed, Only
the man in danger, capable of redemption.
Grace
and the comforts of grace. Blessings, my friend, and again, thank
you. For that first congregation. The first one, according to Barth.
That, too, a Blessingway. Let it alone, now, Jim, that's plenty. More
than enough. Wait, wait, wait, Bonhoeffer has his hands up. He wants
in. "I used to think Bultmann had gone too far. Now I think
maybe he didn't go far enough." And mom. "Jimmy, you've
gone too far this time." Maybe. Maybe not, Mom.
*
Pie
crusts, double-crust, with butter. Light. Flaky. On the lower rack in
the oven so bottom crust will set, not get soggy. Fluted on top. Work
fast with the dough. Keep the butter cold. Roll it out.
*
I
couldn’t keep God out of the poems
and
I couldn’t keep the poem out of the temple.
Walking
animal trails was never intended,
but
spontaneously lost and walking.
Unable
to sleep in the dream, I wake at night,
and
then, reaching above the bed’s headboard
for
my book, and a soft light. I read a few pages,
and
know that I’ve done this, for I mark pages
with
my pen. At some point I’ll know
I
have been, concretely, neither here nor there,
the
book before me open in my hand,
has
not moved, remaining steady.
For
how long, I don’t know, now though,
knowing
I’ve not been present
to
the page. Where have I been? Nothing of this
is
present to me in the morning.
Walking
animal trails.
Leaving
to
write as if in prayer
walking
the animal trails of the four-leggeds
ghost-guided
by the ghosted others
as
I walk.
Jim
Bodeen
20-30
November 2021
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