This Sacred Cycle

I note this week the passing of Tamar Hennessy.

Daughter Kate writes, "My sister Maggie and I were with her - I am grateful for this -- to have been with my mother at the moment of her passing, as she was with her mother in 1980, and as Dorothy Day was with her mother Grace in 1945. I feel blessed to be part of this sacred cycle."

There was a time I felt blessed to be a non-familial intruder in the Day sacred cycle, inspired by Dorothy's life, to serve the poor.

Any romantic notions I once held of poverty are now gone. When I left the sacred cycle I was as angry at the poor, and Dorothy, as I was with myself.

Three years later most of those I served are dead. One with whom I am still in contact lives constantly on the brink of returning to life on the streets. There are times I participate in her drama and others where I can not be bothered to call her back.

Dorothy and Tamar lived lives of intentional poverty. I do not. When I take a shopping day, whether at the mall, or stores like Kohls, it never fails to lift my spirits. I love to sniff out $3 sale racks, also never failing, at Target and Wal-mart, to solemnly choose, in season, the right pack of baseball cards. At home, I carefully, ritually, cut off shirt tags (only to be reminded later by a stranger if I've left the long repeating vertical size "L" sticker on), picking afterwards, the best time to open an Upper Deck pack, thrilling to spot favorties, those familiar Yankees and Orioles who magically appear amongst the common no-names.

All the money I spend is legitimately earned. It's not excessive, for example, like the televangelist Copeland family, who as depicted by AP reporter Eric Gorski, own a "1500 acre campus outside Fort Worth which includes a private airstrip, a hangar and a $6 million mansion," and who among others, are being investigated for misappropriating donations. I don't believe, like Joyce Meyers, that "God wants us to have nice things." This isn't a theological problem.

I don't even know if there's a problem at all other than no longer holding out for a better life for those still living on the streets. Direct contact led me to pit those whose conditions were so far gone that assistance was merely of a hospice-type nature, and therefore worthy and dutiful, against those, who, despite being able, reject an extended hand to alleviate their condition. The latter therefore die at an alarming rate as if punished for their wilfulness, and weaknesses, which of the latter, I am also guilty of many, although cushioned by advantages, not to the same killing effect.

The distinction doesn't matter since both the helpless and redeemable end up dead.

No longer immediately concerned, I live a contented life in the country far from problems I once considered critical, and indeed, they were matters of life and death, of which, my decisions and actions could make the difference.

I'm considering volunteer work in a much more genteel place such as a hospital wheeling patients to their rooms.

In Sunday school, I present left-theological scholars who advocate anything but a Copeland-Meyers style prosperity Gospel; these writers favor the blessed option for the poor, but, like myself, now, at a safe distance.

I note last week I pegged at 50% on the self-rated artibrary Christianity scale. Those, like the Days, immersed in the sacred cycle, are at 100%. Out of respect for Tamar's passing, I'm lowering my mark to 40, and let's face it, that's still way too high.

We musn't give up hope the downward slide represents an inevitable trend. On the commuter train last night, I stumbled across the works of Sextus Empiricus who may very well, provide an intellectual framework to rationalize this in a postive way.

So I'm off, very gingerly, in light of the bad back, rolling a suitcase full of last month's abandoned topic of enthusiasm, to the University library, to re-pack several more volumes of promising ancient wisdom.

The sense of anticipation is as electric as the time right before the contents of a new pack of baseball cards are revealed.