Storypath/Cuentocamino: : DURING THE TIME OF TWENTY PIES

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.