Once in a lifetime, once in a residency, one has the opportunity to decorate a yard for the first time. All of one’s memories and all available technology can run amok in this pristine theater of trees, plants, and structures.
One will have contemplated the theater since moving in as one’s personal property to do with what one will. With a liking for particular lights and certain types of ornaments, one visits the local stores to thoroughly investigate what is available. For one new to the experience, one is keen to pick over everything and make mental notes of what one can buy now, what one can come back for later, and what things one can contemplate, now that he knows about such things. How about the sets of lights without bulbs, for instance, that one can choose for among several different types and colors of lights? Combined with multi-outlet attachments for extension cords? Let the imagination work with these elements.
The big black pine tree in the front yard. Are there enough outlets to comfortably run a cord to wrap lights around the trunk? Or would one prefer simply to hang lots of plain, round, red/green/gold/silver ornaments? Say, 16, four of each color. Now, one has the tree to decorate, and sixteen balls, in sets of four colors. Should one space the bulbs evenly throughout the tree, so that the tree determines the placement of the bulbs? That would be a nice way to emphasize the preeminence of the tree. One can divide the tree into four horizontal sections and place balls of each color at even intervals. By using a square grid of four colors, one can prearrange to have the colors evenly spaced throughout. One can have the balls in four plastic bags, bring them up into the tree, and hang the bags on a branch halfway up the tree. One can them scramble up and down to the bags for the balls, and complete the work with just the one expedition into the tree.
The design will then be natural, graceful, elegant, and perfect. It seems obvious to suggest this process, but in the year that has passed since the last holiday season, most of us have learned the hard way that there is not a surfeit of natural, graceful, elegant perfection in the world. Nor will such a combination of qualities necessarily (if ever) result from following this process. The designer will invariably look at his work and notice the imperfect interval here, the obscured ornament there, the overly droopy lights here, the drunk cousin passed out under the tree over there.
Smaller trees with fewer ornaments lend themselves to simpler processes. A large apple tree might be provided for with two dozen small gold and silver balls, enough to create a nice ring around the perimeter of the tree. One envisions even spacing around the tree, and begins by placing the first bulb. He then walks to the opposite spot of the tree and places the second bulb. Between the two, another bulb. Walk to the opposite side of that bulb, and place its opposite bulb. One can always know that’s how one’s going to execute the task, and not bother with walking all the way around the tree so many times to place opposite bulbs, but some of us, especially we ritual-loving Catholics, enjoy the formality and ceremony of such an elaborate process.
Once one has placed the first four balls, it isn’t so necessary. Even if one is called away from the task, one can return to the task and complete it within the context one has already created, which will enable a shrewd eye to discern the pattern and continue the work properly.
Whether one creates the rings around the fruit trees and/or the ornaments throughout the four zones of the pine tree, space will remain. If one cannot resist another trip to the store for 48 purple balls, one can place those however one imagines: a square grid, three overlapping circles.
However it turns out, just wait ’til next year!

The Pillow Book, by Sei Shonagon, is an old favorite, a contemporary of the much better known Tale Of Genji. Shonagon refers often to the activities of the Buddhist clergy. The translators have the clergy described as priests, and Bishops, sometimes with rosaries. One easily imagines someone with prayer beads, so that’s the intention of referring to Buddhist prayer beads as rosaries. That’s how common prayer beads are, and that’s how well-known is the Catholic accessory known as the Rosary. Hanging from a car mirror, one figures, that’s a car driven by Catholics, but the Rosary could very well be owned by someone who appreciates it as a symbol of prayer.
The Rosary seems symbolic of the consistent and unchanging faith of Catholicism, and it is, while it also has become emblematic of the changes that have been felt since Vatican II. For centuries, the Rosary consisted of the three sets of mysteries: Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious, alternated among the days of the week. Most Catholic parishes have public rosaries before or after daily Mass, but the rosaries prayed at the two churches I regularly attend are not exactly the same as the Rosary I pray, because I have a prayer book from 1952, which includes additional prayers after each decade, so I pray those too. I also pray all the mysteries each day, because I never found any reason why I shouldn’t.
Pope John Paul I added the Luminous Mysteries, which I thought a positive type of audacity that will reverberate through the centuries. This made news, but of a “one fallen shoe” sort. Half of a Rosary mystery is the event. The other half is the prayer intention linked to the event. In the news about the new mysteries, no mention was made of the prayer intentions, so either the news stories were incomplete, or the Pope hadn’t finished formulating his addition. The latter seemed unthinkable. The Pope, of all people, would know that the project wasn’t finished, or his people would know, and they’d prevail on him to keep quiet until the work was properly done.
The other shoe was a long time falling, so I finally formulated the prayer intentions myself. My brother did the same thing, and we came up with completely different intentions.
If the Pope can create new mysteries, I thought, anyone can, so I came up with my own Discipleship Mysteries, which, being my own, didn’t necessarily have to be five mysteries, so I came up with seven.
For a while, I added the Luminous and Discipleship Mysteries to my daily Rosary until it all became too much, so I’ve since reverted back to the original 15, the “Classic Mysteries.”
As time consuming as the Rosary is, as all my prayers are, one scenario that isn’t realistic is that I’ll have time to sit quietly for 45 minutes and unhurriedly pray the Rosary with one or two hands working through the beads. Rather, what happens is that I say the Rosary while doing the physical work of life: household chores, working away at my job, shopping, playing with my son, doing any of the million things I routinely do, which I can do while praying the Rosary. Having prayed the Rosary every day for decades, one can multitask that with the attitude that, the Rosary is an important enough part of my life that I’m not going to force it into the exile of an idyllic scenario that never happens.
The prayer that is meant to be said with my forehead to the floor, I can imagine doing that, and instead of using my beads, I can use my fingers, and if I’m using my fingers for something else, I use my imagination. Meanwhile, several sets of Rosary beads rattle away like prayer flags on the doorknobs of our house.

Prayer thrives in solitude and quietness, which can be hard to acquire. If one would be inclined neither to lead, nor follow, but be alone in solitude and quiet, one can do as Jesus did– go out into the darkness.
Before sunrise, in the city, in the neighborhoods, one can go out and not see anyone for hours. Except for cars and lights in houses, few signs of active life will distract the person who has the streets to himself.
At 5am of a November morning, one can visit Seattle’s Green Lake and sometimes not see a single other person, especially in windy, rainy weather. In calm, mild weather, one might happen across a score of early walkers, with flashlights and headlamps, walking dogs, drinking coffee with a friend.
Running (one or more laps around) the 3.2 miles that is the outer trail around Green Lake is excellent training for the 26.2 mile distance of a marathon. It’s a beautiful lake, with plentiful ducks and herons, canoe teams doing their wee hours’ training, the cozy lights of homes upon the low hills of Wallingford and Phinney Ridge, the clouds and stars overhead, the innumerable varieties of people who have little by way of appearance in common except that we walk, bike, and run around Green Lake for any and every reason.
The morning runner who begins the day with prayers finds these intense activities perfectly compatible. In solitude, one can deploy all his prayer formulas: memorized, standard prayers, personal prayers, petitions for family, friends, loved ones, strangers in desperate and ongoing need, memorized Scriptures, thanksgivings for every day of the week and every month of the year, thanksgivings for decades of Rosary intentions, meditation on the day’s Scripture readings: the long, intricate chain that constitutes one’s daily prayers after decades of fine-tuning and ongoing reforms. The hard work of running in the cold, wind, and rain focuses one solidly in the present, the early morning, on one’s opportunity to internally focus on one’s prayers as one keeps one’s external focus straight ahead on the protruding rocks, puddles, fallen branches, other people, and all the complexities of the trail.
In the day, interior prayer is often interrupted by one’s work and necessary activities, so a powerful incentive to spend hours of mornings running outdoors before dawn is the solitude thus obtained to say one’s prayers!

Some years, some decades, some careers, some lifetimes ago, a kid would have favorite bands. They would release albums, go on tour, and eventually release a live album. A kid would listen to the albums thousands of times, until every detail of every song was essential. A song could not have been played otherwise anymore than snow would fall in August.

At the concert, the music was so loud and so thunderous that the details were lost. One could tell the song wasn’t played the same way as on record, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Usually, one couldn’t really say, and who is the kid to give these giants advice about the finer points? If they played a song he didn’t really like instead of one of his favorites, maybe the kid should think about that.

The kid grows old listening to the albums, the studio recordings and the live recordings, and sometimes wonders how the band could have made some of their bad decisions about how to perform their own songs. The singer should have stuck to the recorded version, for instance, although one can see how the live version would have seemed more exciting to the audience, who might think the singer could show more spontaneous passion live than he would have in the studio.

That’s the chaos of life. One has the studio version of prayer, the Scriptures, the controlled environment, to carefully phrase a perfect formula for a prayer request. One can dispassionately evaluate alternatives and decide what the best self would do, how the unprovoked self would behave, but you look around at your life and there are always things that would never have seemed plausible. What prayers could you have said that God might have answered so things would have turned out differently? It’s never that simple.

One has to perform in life, and when the heat’s on, under the spotlight, facing a skeptical, not always friendly, sometimes even hostile audience, it’s a hard-pressed person trying to hold onto those good resolutions made in the quietness of prayer.

Individual prayer naturally contains characteristics of the individual.

You have an intellectual side, an emotional side, a physical side, and a spiritual side. At any given time, each element is present, but one or some combination of elements will be preeminent. Each element requires ongoing nourishment, and one must have available resources that will cater to a specific element.

Reading Scripture, one is particularly struck by certain passages that seem particularly suited to one’s temperament. “I should remember that,” one thinks, and commits it to memory. WIthin my lifetime, a common mnemonic device was to write down the significant passage and memorize it. Of course, writing something down is a uniquely effective way of beginning the memorization process, so while we have other ways of recording samples of Scripture in portable ways, writing it down has no equal. Although quickly photographing the text and memorizing the passage off that can be the only practical way of accomplishing that. Who has the paper, and the pen, and the time for a lot of scribbling? Once memorized, one has unlimited access to the favorite Scripture in a way that promotes the good health of the brain.

How does one memorize the text? My approach was to search for a simple process that would be successful and could be applied to mnemonics in general. Repetition is the key. To memorize that, think, “Repetition is the key.” Repeat that phrase ten times to yourself, enunciating each word. Then, without looking at the text, repeat it. Repeat it until you have complete confidence that you are repeating the exact text. Then repeat the process with the next sentence. When that is memorized, repeat the two sentences together. Continue with the third sentence. As one continues, one makes the necessary adjustments, depending on how well or not so well one is able to memorize. If it’s the first Psalm you’ve memorized, after you’ve memorized it, repeat it every hour for a week. The next week, repeat it less frequently, then less frequently, until you’re reciting it once a day as part of your daily prayer.  

The intellectual mind now has this resource, available as well, naturally, to each element of the individual. One has this individual experience represented in this Psalm as an opportunity to appreciate that we can learn from the experiences of others, to share their observations and insights, to repeat their words as a means of enrichment and a gesture of solidarity with the writer and with God in their dialogue.

We are ambiguous. We are physical, and we are not. Some places always have even amounts of day and night. The poles alternate that. There is “good,” and “evil,” but is there even that? A Hasidic story tells how what seems evil to us are actually acts of mercy.

Not a few of us don’t know what happens after we die. We don’t know how we got here, why we are here, or the consequences of our actions. Yet we are given answers to every question. Religions make every effort to comfort and assure us that all will be well. Jesus is said to have prepared a place for us. The Gitanjali exclaims, “and at last, to what palace gate have I come in the evening at the end of my journey?” The Apostle Paul wrote one sentence about how man is destined to die once and face judgment, but a bug is squashed and someone wonders, who or what had that bug been in its past life? Who/what will it be in its next? Unless it had no soul. Unless that soul had wandered its last and was now en route to Heaven led by creatures as ostentatious as the bug had been inconspicuous.

We live with knowledge, and ignorance. We have histories we know, and histories we don’t know. We are shaped in our earliest childhood by experiences we don’t remember. We do things that baffle our own selves more than anyone else. I am not a unified personality. Many parts make up the whole, and not all the parts can exist at once. Some parts can be taken out in public. Other parts we hope no one will ever know about, and try to keep hidden. We might even keep our better part hidden, and parade our more commonplace parts. In private, we will lend a helping hand to a downtrodden street person, and in private, guzzle malt liquor, hoping to still keep one’s reputation intact.

When Autumn comes with darkness and storms, we can be relieved that the world throws a cloak over us, that we need not be harshly exposed by the sunlight. When the barriers between this world and the spirit world are said to weaken, we feel a kinship with masks and costumes, because we each have our own spirits that emerge from our own unknowable histories and pasts– brighter masks, and darker masks. We might not choose the dark mask as our preferred identity, as reflective of our fondest aspirations, but every mask we hide, or wear, has its time and place.

Halloween coincides with Samhain, a Celtic, Druidic festival. The feasts of All Saints and All Souls begin November, the month devoted to the souls in Purgatory in the Catholic calendar. Samhain can be slandered as a pagan practice, but it’s not to be dismissed any more than we would preempt the formative experiences of our pre-memory childhoods. All Souls is inclusive of all souls, including the pre-Christian souls of pagan times. If our souls are Christian souls, that needs to include the primordial deposit within them that remains unchanged by any added identity. Though the soul be redeemed and transformed, the pagan soul remains as the soul that awakes within a world of light and darkness, accepting and honoring the blessings of forest, field, stream, ocean, spirits, the Other, wind, rain, fire, sky, Sun, Moon, stars, waiting and watching humbly and patiently as life unfolds, unforeseeably. Meanwhile, neither here, nor there, wondering where is here, where is there, between life and death, earth and sky, eternity and history, Hell and Heaven– meanwhile, here, this Purgatory of ignorance and knowledge, belief and doubt, here we try to make peace with others, within ourselves, with God, Heaven and Hell, our angels and demons.

How does one pray?

You can bend on your knees, close your eyes, put your palms together, point them up, and say, “Our Father.”

Or you can pound your fists against the wall and scream. It happens.

I got the feeling that I was supposed to know how to pray, after being Catholic all my life and going to Catholic schools, but when I decided to really look into it, on my own, for my own use, I didn’t know how to pray.

Jesus’ Apostles asked Him to teach them to pray as John The Baptist had taught his disciples. “When you pray,” Jesus answered, “pray like this.” He wasn’t telling them everything about how He prayed, nor was he conducting the entire class on prayer. I think rather He spontaneously suggested an approach and some topics that were useful examples, even indulging their foibles so far as to give them permission to ask God to please not lead them into temptation. (As if in the Garden of Eden God had said to Adam and Eve, “This is my friend, the Serpent. He’ll give you good advice!” and then stepped away to watch that fateful encounter.) The Lord’s Prayer is one of the great comfort prayers, but a slavish devotion to that is akin to the person who goes into a forest and copies the drawing of someone else in the forest who just drew a tree.

An authentic prayer arising from an inspired individual is more in the spirit of the Lord’s Prayer than a rote recitation of that prayer itself.

A more comprehensive discussion of prayer was planned for this article, but one should only say so much at a time. Maybe next time I’ll write about what I thought I was going to write about this time!   

Death will certainly not be the end of all the things of personal life. So what will one leave behind?
The fewer the things one can pass along, the fewer the things the survivors will have to fight over. If any such combative people populate one’s circle, that could be a factor to consider. One can leave everything to the spouse, but that’s too much to ask of a spouse, and that shouldn’t be the job of the spouse. If the sons want cars and the daughters want furniture, the spouse in question should decide beforehand which son gets which car and which daughter gets which sofa. If there’s stuff that’ll be more trouble than it’s worth, have a garage sale or something! This will work, provided one lives with integrity and has the necessary conversations with the concerned persons to arrive at prudent, considerate, transparent decisions that will not be misunderstood in life or contested afterward.
The regular churchgoer should delight in contemplating which scriptures should be read during one’s service. One quickly turns to favorite, well-known passages. Hearing one’s favorite scriptures at Mass is a treat, and one can look forward to imagining the mourners at one’s funeral hearing God question Job, “Have you seen the janitors of Shadowland?” “No, but maybe our friend in the casket is seeing them right now!” will think one’s mourners with a shiver and a keen sense of thrill. Can one arrange for the Gospel to consist of passages from different Gospels, leaping from Matthew, to John, to Revelation? Perhaps one could explain beforehand to his priest exactly what he wants done so that, if misgivings threaten, the persuasive powers of one’s convictions can prevail. Are there favorite songs of the spouse, or another close one? That could be the best way of honoring that special someone.
The funeral Mass might be too late to attempt to desperately redefine one’s life and one’s relationship with God. It’s simply a routine religious service performed as a powerful act of closure upon a life, but it is not the only or even final such act of closure. The reception after a funeral is an excellent opportunity to present one’s vision of life. A slide show can display photos and texts, any visual aids. A Catholic funeral would not be the place for a reading from the Upanishads, or a short story by Kafka, but a reception slide show could include dozens of literary excerpts one lived by in life. If music is played, and if music was central to that life, one might not need look any further than one’s own smartphone to create a playlist he’d choose to have played at his reception. Those will be suffering songs, angry songs, desperate songs, cacaphonous songs, love songs, revolution songs, old songs, new songs, forgotten songs, instrumental songs, sublime, exquisite, magnificent songs people will be glad to hear, knowing the person had the decency not to try to represent himself at his reception as someone he was not. That playlist should be such an emotional joy and reward that one listens to it every year on one’s birthday, keeping it current, adding and subtracting, keeping it perfect. A good death is a good work in life, an opportunity one can constructively embrace.

One hears stories from soldiers about combat, about how keeping their buddies and themselves alive are their strongest motivations. They don’t want to let their friends down. It’s not going off to war and personally representing the foreign policy of a politician, although nowadays, and in past times, plenty of combatants are inspired by ideologies and agendas.

A Catholic struggles through life as a player in the cosmic drama of light and dark, in a dimension beyond the mundane, quotidian concerns of diet, fashion, and Facebook. Our daily lives contain the spice of eschatology, so that the stakes are great that are in play as the sum of our actions and the influence we wield through the details of our lives.

The consequences being definitively enormous, we seek support wherever we can find it. We memorize inspirational quotes, formulate mantras, wrestle with counterproductive habits and distractions.

We have patron saints. I share the names of Joseph and Matthew, so as a husband and father, I have the example and patronage of Joseph. When Pope Francis cited Joseph’s “concrete, humble, and lowly service,” I took that as an affirmation of the value of doing the seemingly unimportant things that chafe because one wants more important things to do, and wants others to not think one doesn’t have more important things he can do, should do, and does do. As a “late bloomer,” I can look to Matthew as someone else who wasn’t his best self until someone came along and called him to it.

Every day has its many saints, some well-known, others known only as a name on a list. The day you were born has its saints, and those saints are the patron saints of everyone born on that day. St. Francis de Sales is the patron saint of journalists, so he is the patron saint of we, the “ink-stained wretches” of the written word.

Saints become patrons of their homes. Seattle has Mother Cabrini, patroness saint of Seattle. The saints of Ireland are the patrons of the Irish.

After I read the Confessions of St. Augustine, I adopted him as a patron saint, and did the same with St. Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Bernadette, St. John of the Cross, and St. Francis of Assisi. My wife took the name of Scholastica as her Confirmation name, and my son George Martyn brings St. George and St. Martin (spelling difference disregarded!) into our group of family patrons. St. Louise is among our patrons, because the grade school I attended is named in her honor. As a family of musicians, St. Cecilia is another of our patrons. George has a stuffed lion we named “King Wenceslaus,” so St. Wenceslaus too is among our family patrons.

As life unfolds toward its end, these patron saints are specific reminders of the community of souls who support us with their prayers. I hope they will invite us into Heaven, and if it comes down to it, their invitation will be our ticket to that party!