My grandfather lived near Gates Circle in Buffalo when I was a child. He was so many things but most especially he seemed, even to me then, to exude a deep presence of wisdom and peace but most of all courage.
Widowed long before I was born, he was my caretaker, teacher, friend and often playmate. My world spun around him. He was tall, lean and walked everywhere, often holding my hand, whistling, smiling, tipping his hat at strangers. He never owned a car and most likely never had a driver's license. He carried me "up into the air," when I was very small and later slowed his gait to match my stride and then laughed as I ran to keep up with him on our long stretches. I was born on his birthday and have always known in some incomprehensible way that we were a special pair of some odd making. He began teaching me theology when I was five. Once when I had asked him why Episcopalians weren't Catholic, he laughed and said, "My dear, of course we're Catholic. We're English Catholic not Roman Catholic, but Catholic nonetheless." He died when I was only 16, but a piece of his spirit has remained with me ever since.
If there is one word that defined this gentle man, it is courage. He had a great patient heart, full of wisdom, patience, humility and courage. It was his defining character.
As Canadians, he and his young wife had begun a beautiful life together in Toronto in the 1920s. He was an accountant at a bank there and she taught music at the Toronto Conservatory. Their lives were filled with music and friends, three little boys and a home brimming with the expectation of a bright and beautiful future. He had come from a farm near Watford, in rural western Ontario, settled by his Irish father, and she from Stratford-on-Avon, a very proper English town also in rural Ontario, not far from his. He was very Irish with odd words for things and a bit of a brogue and she very English. Both were bright, educated, vibrant and proud. But, what fate would throw at them in the ensuing years would teach them a courage that newlyweds and young parents often don't think to put first on their plate of life.
Just as their young marriage was beginning to bloom with the birth of their third son, the depression hit Canada, closing my grandfather's bank there. He looked south to the United States, where he was offered a job as an accountant at a bank in Buffalo. He gathered up his wife and children, the few things they chose to bring, boarded a train and immigrated to the United States. They rented an apartment on the west side of Buffalo and he went to work. They had a daughter and again looked toward their future with continued hope and joy and even excitement at their new life in the United States, despite having left their families in Ontario. Things were going to work out. Life was kind and generous and loving and promising. They kept the faith at St. John's Church, which later merged with Grace Church, and today is St. John's-Grace Church. Everything looked wonderful on the horizon of their young lives.
As my mother was just beginning to walk, the Great Depression brought everyone to their knees. My grandfather's bank closed. He joined the more than 30 percent of the country that was out of work. My grandmother continued to teach piano lessons and they did manage to survive. But, survive is about all they did for many years until after World War II. Throughout challenging years, they moved a bit, but the extraordinary gift I share with you in this epic blog was my grandfather's strength of courage, evident in his sense of humor that remained in tact, his peaceful presence, his gracious generosity and his ability to seek God in his faith and daily prayers. He was a role model to his children, one of whom became an Episcopal priest and yet flew in the air force during the war.
As my grandfather faced the changing tides of his family's fate with a gentle inner strength, my grandmother's strong English pride began to be tested, allowing a deepened spirituality to grow and hold her steady. Yet she often broke down in tears, my mother said. She died of a heart attack after years of worrying, praying and grieving her son, who had been missing in action in Germany during the war, but finally returned stunning the entire family when he appeared on their doorstep four years later. Not long after his return, her heart gave up. My grandfather's great heart was broken by her passing. He never spoke of her and we were never allowed to ask about her. And, yet, her picture remained on the bookcase. Mysteriously beautiful, long dark wavy hair, bright eyes, alabaster skin with a soft smile, peaceful, self possessed, it exuded that confidence a young woman with a bright hope-filled life ahead, bursting with promise, often has.
I can remember thinking how courageous he must have had to be during the years of the depression and the war years. He was strong in a quiet way, with the humility great wisdom and courage gives a person. He never boasted and in those moments with me as a child, often sang to me, enjoyed jigging and whittling and telling me wild stories, laughing. He told me about his childhood in rural Ontario when he had to wear snowshoes to cross over the winter fields to neighbors or walk into school or church. He helped his mother spin wool as well as tend the few sheep and horses they had. Once, only once, he told me about his love for my grandmother, how they met, how they 'dated,' not a term he used. In the softness of his voice, I heard a deep sadness and a great passion for the woman in the picture on the bookcase.
He gave me a sense of a very different life than that which I lived growing up in the 1960s. They lived off the land, faced everything with a great inner strength and courage. They carried memories told them from generations before them, during which their own families had somehow survived cholera epidemics, and miscarriages and long cold Canadian winters. Yet, those challenges, like those that have always challenged the wit and candor of mankind (and womankind) brought out the best in the best of us and the worst in the worst of us. There were stories, about both kinds of us, that illustrated his source of courage.
Lately, I've seen many changes in our lives. I lived in the postwar era, times when people still talked about their trials during the depression. I was part of that population swell as our country got back on its feet, up out of the ash of the Great Depression and the Second World War. I have lived during our country's engagement in several horrific wars, and then a long lasting quasi-economic decline in Buffalo which never saw the economic boom the rest of the country enjoyed during the 80s and 90s. I've seen terrible inner city poverty, racism, as well as the courageous and dignified response by a faith-based community action organization there that has made wonderfully important changes.
But, more recently, there is something more threatening than anything we've ever seen seeping into our lives. I have experienced a deepening awareness that the foundation of our lives, the economic brick and mortar that has under-girded our country, even our world, feels as though it's slipping, eroding away, taking with it our once fine culture while allowing an undefinable decadence to drag us down.
Yet, at the same time, I hear in my heart, "the light has come into the world and the darkness has not overcome it." My grandmother had left a bookmark on that passage from the beginning of the Gospel of John which was her favorite scripture, my mother said.
Recently, as I was enormously challenged by something, I whispered into the air, "Papo, what would you do?" and distinctly as if he called back from another room in the house, "Have courage." Suddenly tears welled up, my chest heaved a huge sob. "Oh my God, yes! Of course you would say that. 'Have courage!' Yes!" I felt so grateful for that gift that came in that dire moment that transcended time, space, dimension and everything we know about everything.
A few days later, still feelng the weight of everything on my heart and yet his words now vaguely filed away in some other compartment of my mind, I met a priest shopping with his wife. I stopped, looked at his collar and realized he had to be an Episcopal priest - rather than Lutheran because their collars are distinctly different. My heart stirred, the Spirit stirred, I felt something moving in my heart. He was on his cell phone. His wife was looking at light fixtures. I wondered how to ask her. I smiled at her and simply asked her, "Are you Episcopalian?" She brightened up, smiled a broad beautiful smile, nodded and said, "yes." I wanted to hug her. I was elated. I'd not run into an Episcopal priest anywhere in Portland, the self professed land of the 'unchurched.'
She told me they were charismatic Episcopalians, the branch of the church that had broken away from the Episcopal church when it had changed its ways from the old ways, to be politically polite. We talked awhile. He told me where the church was and then said, "On the road you'll see a sign with a lion on it and it's called 'Aslan, where the lion is king."
My jaw dropped and my heart lept. The lion-hearted one, the one of courage. Who else speaks to us through our loved ones, their memories, their timeless gifts that stretch through decades, droughts and economic depressions? I knew I needed courage and then I knew where that courage would be nurtured and strengthened.
I also knew that I wanted to share this story with you because in the next week the U.S. government will either extend or not extend our nation's debt ceiling. I don't know what that will mean for us. I don't know if anyone knows what that will mean. Will it cause a global economic disaster or will it be like a ripple through our already stretched budgets? I don't know. But, I do know that whatever that inevitability holds for us it will either bring out the best or the worst in us. I know, for me, I will put on the whole armor of God and face whatever comes with as much courage as I can find, with as much Spirit as God holds out to me and with as much love, humor, candor, integrity and hope I can..
And, as the Episcopal priest said to me at the end of our conversation, "the peace of the lord be with you....." I offer that blessing "also with you ........" May you also remember the courage of your ancestors, those great souls who also faced an uncertain future with the best in them. And, may you also find the peace that passes all understanding in the tide winds of that ancient courage.
