On Becoming a Protestant

In a Glasgow pub an American returning from the urinal through a narrow passage was accosted by two locals and backed up against the wall. “Are ye a Protestant or ye Catholic?” he was asked.

“I'm an agnostic,” the American said.

“That's all well and good man,”one of the locals answered, “but are ye a Catholic agnostic or a Protestant agnostic?”


I was baptized at St. Robert Bellarimine Catholic Church. I attended St. Robert Bellarmine Grammar School, St. Francis of Asissi High School, and two years at Loyola University of Los Angeles. Most of my life I've identified myself as Irish Catholic, explaining that it wasn't so much a religion as a political statement.

In my 20's I ceased to believe in the divinity of Jesus and by the time I was thirty I was pretty much an agnostic. I did and continue to believe in ritual and tradition and the connection we make through ritual with what is beyond our understanding. I sent my sons to Catholic schools, more because the alternative in the urban neighborhood we lived in was unacceptable than from any need to make them Catholics, but I did want them be exposed to a world view that was more about service than materialism. I became an active member of the local parish. I was OK as long as we didn't talk about theology and the stories I heard from the pulpit were so familiar they seemed like old friends to be accepted, not necessarily believed, but not openly questioned.

And then I got divorced. There's not much room for a divorced man with an active social life in the Catholic Church. I like church, I like the community of it. At the same time I got sober through a 12 Step Program. While my atheism/agnosticism was becoming more refined I experienced the miracle of recovery and the blessing of grace. For awhile I attended Episcopalian services. As I got more deeply involved it was obvious that Episcopalians, Christians, believe in Jesus Christ and while it didn't seem to be required it did make me feel out of step.

One day a Jewish girlfriend asked me to explain the Trinity.. I wasn't much of a believer but I had always hung on to the idea that Catholicism and Christianity was a reasonable way to view the world, that it made sense, just not to me. As I tried to explain the Trinity, the reasonableness of it vanished, like the Psych 101 picture of the cups and the faces, once I tried to explain it, the Trinity went away. It was the moment that my Christian viewpoint vanished.

My alienation from Catholicism was only confirmed when John Paul II canonized St. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei.

When I went to Mt. Diablo State Park, I realized I was going to be alone in a community where I didn't know anyone. I was reading Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone which had me thinking about connecting with community in a way beyond what AA offered, I searched around having some idea that Unitarians might be interesting. Before that my only experience with Unitarians was going to 12 step meetings in a Unitarian Church in Santa Monica and reading the posters and bulletin boards in the room we used.

I attended a service of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Walnut Creek. I was amazed, it was the first church I had ever attended that didn't care about belief or dogma and didn't require I accept some sort of defined metaphysics. I could openly talk about my experience and beliefs, talk about the questions, not the answers. I was among similar minded people in an open and free thinking church.

When Suzette and I first began seeing each other she was searching for a church she might attend. She was brought up Catholic and attended Catholic school just as I had. I took her to a Unitarian Universalist Church and I was pleased when she took to it immediately. When Suzette and I left Angel Island we looked for a Unitarian Church we could attend. When we went to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, transplanted from Berkeley to Kensington in 1961, we found a home. Within the year we became members.

We quickly became involved with the church. Our daughter Paloma enjoyed the pre-school and we enjoyed the social connections . Bill and Barbara Hamilton-Holway were the co-ministers. They were warm, loving, and interesting people. Laura, the family minister, was wonderful.

One day early on at dinner Paloma held up her hands making two 'U's with her thumb and index fingers and said “U, U for Unitarian Universalist.” I thought, oh my god, she's being propagandized and then I realized, no that was a big reason we joined a Church. Since then she's learned the principles, been through a course of early childhood sex education, performed in various plays and skits and played the harp for a Vesper Service. She knows we're not Christians as some of her evangelizing classmates have been, not followers of Jesus or Mohamed. As we discussed it she suggested instead that we're followers of Martin Luther King Jr. Close enough, I thought.

I was asked to join the religious education group, Sunday School. I read to the pre-school group Paloma was in and enjoyed it. Slowly I began to admit I am a Sunday School teacher, which sounds incredibly Protestant to me. I now teach kindergarten and will stay with that age group for awhile. I know it's shallow but just the sound of these things grates on my Catholic soul. Anyone who knows Unitarians knows that we number among us a significant number of ex-Catholics, along with Jews, atheists, and others who would never describe themselves as Protestants but . . .
The history and tradition of the Unitarians and Universalists is a direct line from the dissenters in the Reformation. The tradition of a unified godhead goes back to the third century C.E. and there have been unitarians since then, many burned at the stake and in the Reformation they were burned by both Protestant and Catholic Trinitarians. However the real roots of today's Unitarianism go back to the end of the 18^th and beginning of the 19^th century and Chritisan rationalists like J.B. Priestley. Charles Darwin had Unitarian connections. Early in the 19^th century Harvard Divinity School began to have a Unitarian bent to it.

Like the Congregationalist, descendants of the Puritans, the Unitarians were from upper crust Boston.  In the 19^th century it was said of the Unitarians, “They believe in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the neighborhood of Boston.” In Ireland the Unitarians, there is a congregation in Dublin and one in Cork, are direct descendants of the Non-Subscribing Presbyterians, similar to our descent from the Puritans. The evolution of religion seems to naturally flow to a rationalist acceptance of the indefinable divine and awe at the miracle of the universe and our inter-connectedness in it. Or something like that. The Unitarians of today have a direct ancestry to the opening of minds in the Reformation through the Age of Enlightenment. It is a Protestant heritage, not a Catholic one.

The Irish website says, “Our ethos is ‘faith guided by reason and conscience’ and we advocate liberal and tolerant Christianity.” I think they're saying they're Protestants though I'm sure some of their congregants aren't and among us UU's that's OK.

In Unitarian Universalist congregations there are Catholics, Jews and Buddhists and there are Christians. It varies in the United States. Our church in Berkeley and many like us don't see ourselves as Christian. There's a joke about Unitarians that the only time you hear the name of Jesus in a Unitarian Church is when the janitor falls down the basement steps. When a minister talks too much about the Bible or Jesus in churches like ours some people complain. I don't complain but I do cringe.

However the UUCB service is the traditional non-conforming Protestant liturgy, hymns, preaching from the pulpit and more hymns. Music is also an important element of our services. Lately the services last an hour and a half, something else some of us complain about. Socializing afterwards can be another hour or two. And I attend board meetings, talks, family events, trainings, and more. Suzette and I probably go to the church at least once or twice a week other than Sunday. All that time spent at church makes me feel much more Protestant than Catholic. As a Catholic I went to a 45 minute mass on Sunday and school events. No Sunday school and little socializing at church. I feel like an Evangelical who goes to church most of Sunday, Bible study one night a week, church dinners another night and maybe something else.

When I first started going to the UU church I told my park mates that I attended the Church of the God Who Isn't. I didn't want anyone to think I was a “Christian,” one of those evangelicals who thinks everyone but they are going to hell. But when I became a Sunday School teacher I thought it was time that I own up to what I've become. So I told people I taught Sunday School without qualifying it, me and Jimmy Carter, not bad company. I even put it on my resume when asked about my teaching experience. The formerly welcoming principle at the school I wanted to volunteer at wouldn't return my phone calls. I suspect she thought I was one of those Christian fundamentalists. I did get a job at Coronado Elementary School. I believe even fundamentalists have a right to teach in our schools, I just don't happen to be one, but I am a Sunday School teacher.

So more and more I tell people I attend church, a Unitarian Universalist church and less and less do I explain it. Let them think what they will.

But I feel very far removed from my Catholic roots. I surprised myself when I followed the election of the Pope so closely and I still have strong opinions about the new Pope and how far he should go. But I am no longer Catholic; I am a Unitarian. Unitarian Universalism has a Protestant heritage and it does not feel or act Catholic in any way.

At Episcopal churches I felt like a dissenting Catholic. As an Irish Catholic, Catholicism wasn't just a religion, it was a connection with my Irish heritage, Irish independence, and Irish specialness, even here in the United States. My Irish bias, bigotry maybe, is deeply rooted. When I meet someone who claims to be Irish, reflexively I think if you weren't raised Catholic how can you be Irish. The truth of it is that just having an Irish name or some Irish ancestor doesn't make a person Irish. It's the culture, the traditions and the shared history. It doesn't have to be Irish Catholic but it most often is, the shared history of nuns and St. Mary Queen of the Martyrs school. The Catholic church, the local parish with it's Irish pastor, was the keeper of our culture, our tie with the Emerald Isle.

That world is gone. There are no Irish pastors left, not a bad thing. The local parish instead of being a bridge to the larger world and at the same time protection against it has become an alien place to me. The progressive church of my youth has become the conservative church of today. While my own world has grown in acceptance and tolerance the Catholic Church has regressed. Irish Catholics are as likely to be Republicans as Democrats. While I take pride in Ted Kennedy, there's no pride in Paul Ryan.

In Ireland I met Irish who were Church of Ireland, the Anglican Irish Church, Unitarian, and Protestant, all of whom were at least as Irish and patriotiotic as I am. One doesn't have to be Catholic to be Irish and I can convert to a Protestant Intellectual tradition that runs through Ireland as well. But it feels like I've given up something for my conversion. Nonetheless I'm proud to be a Unitarian.

Like the Commitments in Roddy Doyle's novel of the same name, I'm Unitarian (almost Protestant) and I'm proud.

And if confronted in a Glasgow pub I might just dodge the bullet and tell them I'm a Celtic fan, the Irish Nationalist Football Club in Glasgow, and an Irish Unitarian.
















Notes

The UUs as we call ourselves share the 7 principles which are the basis of our community:

1. The inherent worth and dignity of every person
   
2. Justice, equity and compassion in human relations
   
3. Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations
   
4. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning
   
5. The right of conscience and the use of democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.
   
6. The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all
   
7. Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part
   

 The Unitarians and the Universalists merged in 1961. It's easiest to simply say Unitarian but in fact we are Unitarian Universalists. An early crack in my Catholic faith occurred when I heard the Episcopalian Bishop Pike of San Francisco preach a Universalist message.

 Feeling my nostalgia for the Catholic Mass I sometimes sneak off to an Epsicopalian church for a mass. One time in Richmond I went to the local Episcopal Church. The church in Richmond is named Holy Trinity. I felt like a Unitarian heretic. Now I go to Iglesia Santiago in Oakland, a less inflammatory named Epsicopal church. Of course, both of these Episcopal churches are well attended by a lot of ex-Catholics. There are a lot of us.

Unitarian beliefs have evolved a long way from just asserting that there is only one God. The joke is that in the 1990's the Unitarians updated their belief from: There is only one God, to there is only one god more or less.

A Book Review

You Had to Be There: From Web Town to Psych Ward – A Memoir
by Terrence McCarthy
Published June 15, 2010 by Createspace


Sometimes when I'm with my friend Bob and his wife Penny, she will interrupt him saying “TMI, Bob.” Too much Information. So when Bob and I get together without Penny we exchange TMI and tell the whole story, sometimes for the third or fourth time. I think it's in those long detours to explain that Bob and I learn about each other and tell each other who we really are.

Terrence McCarthy's memoir “You Had to Be There” is TMI. McCarthy's memoir is incredibly honest. In reading it we learn who Terrence McCarthy really is. In his unpolished style with detours and repetitions McCarthy seems unconsciously to reveal more and more about himself.

Born at the beginning of the Baby Boom, growing up in an unremarkable town in an ordinary family McCarthy is in some ways a Baby Boomer Everyman. It isn't the usual memoir we read, grunts in Vietnam, famous reporters or writers, movers and shakers, people who make history or stand in the middle of it. But he's not Everyman, he's Terry McCarthy and in reading the book he has written we come to know Terry McCarthy like a good friend.

If I were teaching a class about the 60s and 70s in America I would assign “You Had to Be There” as required reading. It is full of anecdotes that make the era real. He struggles with his inner demon and goes from one college to another and finally drops out. He joins the Air Force and goes to Myrtle Beach and then England while Vietnam is raging. He gets out of the Air Force and is lost at home, finding a job in a local factory or mill, meets his future wife in a local watering hole, finishes college, becomes a journalist, a copywriter and then quits and works for 11 years in a locked psych ward as a counselor.

It's not the stuff of history but in fact it really is, an ordinary life in extraordinary times, lived well and with great awareness. It is ordinary and good people like Terrence McCarthy who make an age what it is and in this Terrence McCarthy is an extraordinary person, a person I enjoyed getting to know.

I hope McCarthy gives us a sequel, this book brings us to the middle of a good life.  A sequel and we can share with McCarthy the insights of growing old. More information, please.

You Had to Be There at Amazon

Mexico

Photo credit see below

Tuesday Paloma and I flew to Mexico City. By this time it's a familiar place to both of us. Twenty years ago I met Araceli Rocha. She came up to Los Angeles from Mexico to work at California Commerce Bank,a subsidiary of her employer Banamex, where I had just started working the year before. She was nearly engaged to Raul Gomes and I was nearly engaged to Susan. Araceli and I became good friends, a brother sister relationship. I have three sisters. I like women. I find them attractive but I also enjoy them as equals, though I've come to realize women are often our superiors in many ways, as Araceli and my sisters would quickly agree. Araceli is an attractive woman but our relationship has always been that of friends.

I became friends with Raul and Araceli became friends with Susan and that continued after her marriage and mine. There were visits to Mexico and return visits to us in the United States.

I love Mexico and after 1995 any visits to Mexico always included a few days in Mexico City which I learned to call D.F., day efeh. When Araceli was in Los Angeles she learned to speak English and I was learning to speak Spanish. We became each other's teachers. In 2001 I attended Araceli's daughter's baptism and became the godfather, one of two, an official Mexican padrino and myself the padrino norteamericano.

Fianna eventually attended bilingual school. I attended her graduation from escuela primeria. She gave the English address. This time we are here to attend her graduation from escuela secundaria, middle school.

This year Araceli and Raul are estranged. Susan and I are divorced and I am married to Suzette. Suzette and I have visited here together as well. Two years ago Paloma and I stayed a month with the Gomes Rochas. Paloma was four. Now Paloma attends a bilingual school. This year we are here again.

“Yes come down, of course. It makes no difference.” Araceli uses “of course” a lot. I'm not sure what my overworked Spanish phrases are. I'm sure I have them. Of course. Suzette my wife is staying in Oakland. We're not estranged. She can't take a whole month off work and will join us for the last two weeks.

From our arrival at the airport it is obvious that the relationship between Araceli and me will stay the same as it has been. Raul is still living in the back room separated from the house. Raul and I are still friends. Later Araceli tells me with excitement that she is talking to an old boyfriend from Guadalajara.

Thank god, I like having Araceli as a friend, una amiga mia. My life is not simple but at least this part is not too complicated.

Mexico. The immigration officer looked at the address on my visa application and said, “¿Queda con su familia?” You're staying with family. Si, yes we are. We drive across town, the Rochas live in Atizapan de Zaragoza on the west side of D.F. in the state of Mexico. The airport is on the east side. Tia Pilar is the driver. As compadre I am part of Araceli's family, so I know her sisters, Pilar, Delores, Axochitli, and Yatzil and her brother Roberto, her mother Conchita. In the car I call Pilar Delores. I know she is the dentista, the one sister I easily recognize but I mix the names and with the others the faces.

Mexico is a big city and it takes an hour to get across it. We go to Conchita's house and pick up Fianna my goddaughter and Conchita and we all go to Bisquets, Paloma's favorite place from our visit before. It is a coffee shop and the food is as good as Denny's in a Mexican way, the simple standards and sandwiches, malteds, coffee with milk, a specialty.

I'm not sure it's still Paloma's favorite. Our next time out to eat, Fianna, Paloma and I find a place on our own in La Condessa, the hippest neighborhood in all of Mexico City, while Araceli has lunch with her life coach across the way. At six Paloma is very proud that she likes sushi, a taste she acquired having lunch with me at my regular Japanese place near Lake Merritt in Oakland. She had a California roll which for her is sushi. So we go to Mushi Mushi, her choice, a Mexican sushi bar. They have a conveyor belt with sushi on it that goes between the tables, like a Japanese Mexican Dim Sum. Paloma is delighted and has California roll again. Afterwards at Cassava Roots, a new Mexican chain, we have tapioca bubble tea drinks, I have coffee.



Photo from http://www.atractivosturisticos.com.mx/tag/ciudad-de-mexico/

The Mission, San Francisco

I went to the Mission today. I rode my bike down to the BART Fruitvale Station, left my bike at the free bike valet service and rode the BART in to the City. Even at 9am the BART is crowded, no seats left, the cars are old and tired and it's expensive. The BART was good 50 years ago, but it badly needs updating today.

The Mission is an amazing place. I first visited the Mission 21 years ago, a barrio in the heart of San Francisco, a dense hub of all things latin. It was a cool place to live even then, teeming with vitality and history. Friends there were cool people living in old Victorians. A few years later I first noticed gentrification starting on Valencia Street, fancy restaurants, bars and cafes that were cool and expensive. Since I retired and moved to the East Bay I haven't been to the City much and hardly at all to the Mission. In the time I've been gone gentrification has attacked the Mission with a vengeance. Gentrification is pushing east from Valencia which is now full of boutiques, cafes, bookstores, galleries and clothing stores. Apparently gentry shop for clothes a lot.

Now the gentrification is striking at the heart of the Mission itself, taking over Mission Avenue and gobbling homes and lots on the backstreets, renovating some, new construction on others. The local color, the shops, the restaurants are still there but the rents are going up and what's there and been there is being squeezed out.

I'm not opposed to gentrification outright. Everyone needs a place to live. Subsidized housing and set asides are bromides for the lucky few who get it, while the rest of the poor are just pushed out and people with ordinary jobs can't even think about living in the City. In my opinion the whole system needs revamping, how people earn a living, how we pay people, how housing is built and how it's financed. In the meantime we let the market make all these decisions for us and claim there's little that can be done to stop it and then we do even less.

Even East Oakland is feeling the pressures of the market, the poor are being pushed further out and ordinary working people can barely afford to live here. Suzette and I have a comfortable house we squeezed into last year and we look forward to the improvements that gentrification will slowly make in our neighborhood. All things remaining equal, – let's not think or do anything about global warming or solve our social problems with real changes, – and after 10, 15, 20 years we'll be able to sell our house for an outrageous sum and move out of the city.

I had lunch with my friend John who has non-Hodgkin lymphoma in his lungs. He had radiation and just this week learned that the treatment got most of it, that there is something still there, it may just be scar tissue or it may be cancer. The type of cancer is very slow moving and in six months they'll check again, scar tissue and things are good, cancer, more treatment.

John is an amazingly strong person. He's a philosopher and a songwriter and incredibly well read. He looks almost down and out, never has taken much interest in his own appearance, but he reads the classics and knows writers some but not all of whom I have heard of. A few I've read excerpts or paragraphs from. He claims to have read Tacitus in the original Latin and understood it. I'm skeptical of anyone reading Latin but in John's case it could be true. After all he's Italian.

John and I used to smoke cigars together. With John I'd smoke Parodis, those little stumpy Italian cigars that look like something you might find on a city sidewalk. If I had a fatal prognosis I'd start smoking cigars again. John agrees. We didn't smoke any cigars today.

I like churches.  I love the variety of architecture and I love the variety of churches.  It seems in Richmond we have more churches than any other place I've ever been.  The Latter Rain Church of God in Christ is one of my favorites.  

I think if Jesus were here today or if he came back he would preach in a church like this.   

Latter Rain Church of God in Christ
474 Spring Street
Richmond

Or maybe here at the Iglesia Apostolica Nuevo Plumaje where there are free coffee and donut on Sunday before the service.  

Iglesia Apostolica Nuevo Plumaje
2959 Cutting Boulevard
Richmond

Mt. Olive Church of God in Christ
445 South 25 Street
Richmond

Southside Church of Christ
1501 Florida Avenue
Richmond

Our Lady of Mercy
301 W. Richmond Avenue
Point Richmond

Random Thoughts December 15th

I'm changing my blog and what it's all about. For a couple of years now since I finished my biography, posted on this blog, I've tried to start a regimen of writing thoughtful essays, columns as it were on weighty subjects. I was going to write something about Feguson. But it just seems too difficult to get started, all the things I think about don't coalesce when I try to put them down in an essay.

And about Feguson. When it first happened I was pretty much on the side of the cop, though the town and local police forces didn't do themselves any honor. More information came in and it looked confusing. Feguson became a national cause. Did I say I'm a retired cop – I've been there when I don't know what the suspect is going to do, my gun drawn, and the wrong move and I'm going to fire. Yes, to do the job, we tell ourselves it's important to be willing to be in situations like that and we tell ourselves returning home is important to our families and if that means making a life and death decision quickly and then being wrong, well that's the risk of the job.

I know cops don't go out looking for people to shoot and they don't shoot people because of their race. But I do know that there are some cops that make bad decisions out there. Sometimes they don't know when to back off or they don't know how to approach a suspect without jacking them up or getting jacked up themselves. Maybe they stereotype too much forget that everyone is an individual.

And I know that black kids are more likely to get shot than white kids. Feguson definitely could use some Black cops, but who voted for an all white city council? In my opinion exercising voting rights is the best way to protest injustice.

And then I think about the recent elections in Richmond. Because they were off year elections turnout was low. Chevron tried to buy the election, funding a slate of candidates favorable to their agenda. They lost. They lost because turnout was low and the African American precincts with majorities for the Chevron candidates were overwhelmed by the other voters. The head of the Chevron slate was a well known Black councilmember. In America we have democracy and the mess that we have in Federal and state governments is what we voted for.

So today I was driving up San Pablo Avenue and just before Miller Drive saw the flashing lights of a fire truck in the middle of the street, a Sheriff's car was coming up beside the traffic and it was obvious there had been an accident at the intersection of Miller and San Pablo, It was raining heavily. This is our second series of storms in a few days, the roads were slick and wet, running with water. More fire engines and paramedics were pulling up as we crawled up the hill, two Richmond Police were coming down the hill Code 3, lights flashing, sirens screaming.

The accident was only one car, a Volvo straddling the center parkway, its front axle broken and the car was dented and banged up as if it had rolled. There was a woman sitting in the driver's seat and on the other side someone was holding an umbrella over the passenger side. The firefighters were moving with that deliberate slowness that indicated the situation was serious. In the distance I could hear the wail of an ambulance on its way to the scene.

We're getting ready for Christmas, the tree is up. I've bought gifts for Suzette and still have to buy Paloma gifts. She got a big girl's bicycle for her birthday, so Christmas will be a nail painting set, puzzles, and probably I'll relent and get a Barbie doll.

“How many Barbie dolls do you have?”

“Six.”

“You need another one?”

“Yes.”

Later Paloma informed us that Emily has 15 Barbie dolls. We countered that maybe she got some of them from her older sister, a freshman at Cal. That argument didn't impress Paloma. I think she thought she needed an older sister who would go to Cal and leave Barbies behind.

And I think about that Volvo and the woman in the front seat who was probably on her way down the hill on an errand like we were coming back from. And I think about the passenger shielded from the rain and what their injuries might have been. How old are they? Was it a child?

Instead of dinner and VCR recordings of Wild Kratts, the background noise to writing this, they're probably at a hospital or maybe worse.

Life is fragile. In a moment it can be turned upside down or even ended. And the rest of us go on.

50th Reunion

I went to my high school's 50^th reunion this weekend. It was not easy. I don't think it was easy for a lot of us there. It was a good weekend but for me there was a lot of stress in just showing up to see people I hadn't seen in 50 years. I spent a lot of time prior to this event just thinking how I would appear to my old classmates.

This event had been on my mind for months if not years.  I was embarrassed by my own inner dialogue.  It seemed so petty that in my head I was justifying myself and explaining how successful I really was instead of the way I thought I might appear to them.

From the very start it turned out to be an exercise in maintaining my self esteem while keeping my ego in check. What I learned at my high school 50^th reunion was that my classmates, mostly people I barely knew in high school, were really nice people. As a group John Doherty observed we were men of substance, respectable members of our community. As I met people I was struck over and over again what good guys they were. And their wives were nice too.

There was only one classmate from my circle of friends there. Seeing Bob again was a real pleasure. The last time I saw him he was getting ready to ship out to Vietnam as a Navy medic. The best part of seeing him was to celebrate that he had survived. One of our classmates was badly wounded in Vietnam, shortly after arriving there as I understand it. He was in long recovery that started touch and go. He was the war hero that everyone seemed to be particularly aware of. I guess John was the sacrificial lamb for people and they had to express their admiration and awe for his sacrifice and certainly gratitude for his recovery.

As a veteran, I didn't have to go to Vietnam, I admired John for going and I'm sure his recovery required courage and heart. John like many others was wounded in the first few weeks in Vietnam probably before he learned to duck. 

(After writing this I learned John had been a medic in Vietnam.  Anybody who was a medic in my world automatically is a hero.  Sometimes it doesn't pay to write honestly how I feel, particularly when I'm wrong.)

No one seemed to notice Bob the way they did John. If anyone was a war hero I thought it was Bob. On direct questioning he admitted he had been a medic with the Special Forces and jumped out of a few helicopters. I'm sure he saved many lives and saw many young men die. No one seemed to be aware of that except me. Today Bob is a heart surgeon. I sat next to him for a few minutes and we exchanged information. Bob talked on about things I didn't have much interest in. We don't really have much in common any more, but sitting next to him I had a real feeling of affection and joy in his presence, just to see him and I could feel the same from him. Without thinking about it we patted each other on the arm a few times. We were there together. The words didn't matter.

When I was in high school I thought I was one of the bright kids and a lot of the others were kind of dumb. Since then I've learned that some of the others became doctors, veterinarians, county administrators, financiers, lawyers, newspaper reporters, bartenders, artists and stock brokers. For me my own career pales when I compare it. I was smart. I'm still smart, but not smart enough to have earned much money or prestige. I remind myself I never really worked very hard to earn money. Of course, I'm selling two successful careers short, but when I started comparing myself to my classmates,

My struggle was to be mindful that we had all done well including me while at the same time trying to resist telling stories that made my own experience sound like more than it really was. Most of us were pretty interesting when we got to talking about the things we loved. Many of us had kids and had been good parents, most of us were grandparents and proud and excited about the offspring of our offspring.

One of my classmates was a doctor, who was living and practicing in the same town he had gone to after residency. He said he was married to a wonderful wife and had wonderful children and as we exchanged stories, we hadn't really been friends in high school, he said something about being envious of the excitement in my life. I've been a banker, a juvenile hall counselor and a Park Ranger. His admiration surprised me when it was his life I was envying, his stability and solid accomplishments.

I heard one of our classmates had been in auto accident as an undergraduate at USC and suffered severe brain damage in the frontal lobe and while still alive was badly debilitated. Steve had been a bright guy, he was good looking kid and though he hadn't found himself in high school, I'm pretty sure he would have been successful in life but for the accident. No one else said anything about Steve. Maybe it wasn't true. Maybe I got it wrong. I hope so.

With another classmate I speculated that probably 10 of our classmates had passed on, ten out of 95. One of them had been my closest friend in high school. He died in 2011 of a heart attack a year after my own heart attack. Another had died of some mysterious infection or illness but as the story was explained it seemed the underlying cause was acute alcoholism.

Two of us were sober in AA. The other AA member avoided me every time I tried to talk to him. I'm not sure what the problem was. He was someone I had felt kinship with in high school. I had been looking forward to seeing him. After chasing him the first evening of the reunion, I gave up, and noticed the next night he carefully kept his distance. There was something wrong between us but I had no idea what it was.

Three of us had been commercial bankers, probably the only three in the room who knew that banking can be interesting, at least before bankers become securities brokers instead of lenders.

The school hadn't changed much. The reunion was all around a football game Friday night. When I attended St. Francis the school was all about football. Then Saturday evening there was a Mass before the dinner. It wasn't mandatory and the attendance was light. Father Tony the new principal preached a sermon based on the workers in the vineyard parable. The moral I got from his homily was that even though our lives up until then may not have earned us a place in heaven, that we could still secure a place in heaven at this late date. It occurred to me that one way we might secure our eternal reward was by donating a large sum of money to the school. I'm prone to being too cynical about intentions in the Church.

Later when I cornered Father Tony he seemed to be in a hurry to move on and talk to someone else. We might have had a lot in common.  Before he became a priest he was a banker in downtown LA,  He was quick to deny I might know anyone he knew.  Like a politician looking for voting blocks or donations, he didn't have time to waste with pointless questions. He made a good impression on everyone else.  For myself maybe I'm a little jaundiced on bankers and priests.

I thought about the priest who taught us English the last two years at St. Francis.  He taught us by reading out loud from the introductions to the pieces in our anthology. His interest wasn't really in teaching, he seemed to be more interested in administering to the spiritual needs of the rich.

Of course, some of us needed to tell people who we were, to explain to our classmates our success as if we were still 17 years old. I don't think anyone was doing it intentionally but it was the gist of some conversations that night. It was something that came out, something we needed to say. Having been bullied most of my youth from early on through high school, I was telling people that I could stand up for myself. I had been a cop. One classmate who had been a poor student told me, one of the smart kids he reminded me, that he was really smart and had been very successful and was very well off in spite of having been classed with the dummies.

Some if not most of our classmates seemed to be comfortable with who they were. All of us I think were trying to portray ourselves as successful, as happy with our lives. No one seemed unhappy. And it was true we were successes, we had done well.

I was interested in how we were aging and what that was like for others. I wasn't the only one who had had heart trouble already. I was asked, “How many colonoscopies have you had?” Someone I talked to had had a hip replacement. All of us are in our late 60's and we looked it except for one of us. Rick did look much younger than the rest of us. At first I didn't think he belonged to our group. I heard another classmate remark that he must be drinking formaldehyde on a regular basis. Our wives looked our age as well, the homecoming queen, the comfortable housewives.

I sat at the stag table, those of us from out of town, the bachelors or the divorced. It was a Catholic school so there was no talk of first, second or even third wives, no divorces or worse. No one was openly gay. One classmate wasn't there because he was in prison in Arizona or had been. I thought it was for financial fraud, but learned later it had been for burglary.

I was interested in who was retired and how they handled that and who wasn't. One classmate had retired for a year and half and said, he couldn't take it and went back to work as an insurance broker. About half the class seemed to be retired and happy with being done with it all and the other half were still working. Being in the retired group my bias is that those who are still working are refusing to give in to the aging process, to give up their work bound identity and just be. It wasn't so much that people were still working but as they told it they were working hard and they told me how much they were still valued in their jobs. We all do what we need to do, I was just happy I don't have to work anymore.

I was glad I had been there. In the end I had to admit to myself that while I wasn't rich, that my life hadn't followed a predictable path to success and prestige, but I had what I needed. I was saddened to know that Steve had been debilitated early in life. It was disappointing that most of the people I knew well in high school weren't there, a couple had passed away, others were out of contact and some just couldn't make it. I felt fortunate that I had survived and that after 68 years I wasn't embittered, that I wasn't a fool, and that like most of my classmates I was OK. We had done well.