Sat, 11 Dec. 1999 - On Flt. 808, Boston to SFO
I think we must be somewhere over Iowa. It's flat in all directions and we passed Lake Michigan not long ago.
Isn't it funny that I still call this book my Legacy Journal? Something ironic about that. I just reread Derek's letter, and my thoughts afterwards. I wrote nothing after I heard the news on CNN and saw the House in flames. When I saw that image, I knew what it was instantly. Even before a word was said, my blood ran cold. I knew that Derek was gone, and I feared the others were lost too. I scarcely remember the call - Rachel's voice, all funny sounding. 'Derek's gone. He was in there when it blew. We're all OK, thanks to him.' When was the last time I spoke to him? After Kristin vanished into the portal? I should have gone then.
My words wouldn't come. It was like - I don't know - like when I was a boy and Sr. Mary Madeline, who didn't like me nor Michael much, would accuse us of something we didn't do. I sometimes think she made them up. I heard her once say to Fr. Flaherty that it didn't matter who did what, a little humility never hurt anyone. But, when she'd haul me up in front of the class to explain something I knew nothing about, I'd go all tongue tied, my throat would seize up, my stomach would lurch, and my brain would go totally blank. All I could see was her great, ugly face in front of mine and all I could hear were the sniggers of the other lads. That's what it's been like over the past few weeks - not the cause, but the result.
Nick used to laugh every now and again when one of his practical jokes would catch me by surprise. He'd say I looked like a deer caught in the headlights. That's exactly what it is - but a deer caught in the headlights that knows in that instant that there's no escape, that in a split second, which lasts for an eternity, it will all be over.
Monsignor Pedretti thinks my behaviour unseemly for a priest. I am too affected by the loss of my friend, he says. We are supposed to give comfort at the hour of need, but our faith is supposed to be strong enough to sustain us at our own darkest moments. 'I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Pray for him, my son,' he says, 'have faith, and all will be well.'
I understand death. We Irish know death. The world thinks of us as happy-go-lucky drinkers and brawlers, who sing songs of the Emerald Isle, Molly Malone, and Up the Rebels, but we have a shadowy side. It's that part that has carried the Battle of the Boyne in our hearts for 300 years, that created the poetry of Yeats and the literature of Joyce and Beckett, and survived the Penal Laws and the decimation of the famine. But I sometimes think that what we cherish the most about it is the anger of death. We glory in it.
I think the Italians cling to the tragedy of it - like the old ladies in their widow's weeds who never miss a funeral. Heaven forbid that some poor soul goes to meet his Maker without being suitably wept over. They stroke their grief like a Persian cat and bury their it in the tears and ancient scented handkerchiefs. We Irish, we celebrate it with a wake, then we weep over it, then we use it to feed our angry demons until it grows into a fat, monstrous thing. It almost consumed me when Michael died. Our fellow Catholics had set that bomb to maim and kill women and children, and it killed my brother - a good Irish Catholic with a wife and five children - 'collateral damage' they called it. I thought I'd never get beyond the 'why' of it. Have I? Or was it just asleep until now? Why, God!!! Are you just and loving, or are you as fickle as any of the ancient Greek gods?
With Derek - where do I aim that anger save at myself? I go in circles. I don't know how to disarm this bomb. Our Lord said, 'Love your enemy as yourself,' but I and my enemy are one. My stomach is in knots. I almost wish this plane would crash in some snowy Kansas cornfield, if I could be the only one who would be hurt. Dear God, how shall I make it through the rest of this day and tomorrow? I am doing this because I must. It is the right thing to do. Derek would want me, I think. But every cell in my body screams 'run'! Run before the bomb goes off. Run before it blows up in my friends' faces.
How shall I ever face them all? What must they all think of me? I've failed them all - that's what. I betrayed them. I wasn't there for Derek, and I wasn't there for them. I've done nothing but search my own heart, my vocation, my faith - its beginnings and how I've changed since I first served as an alter boy so long ago. I'd always thought that, other than my family, old Fr. Murphy had been the most important person in my life. It was because of him that I decided to become a priest. I wanted to be like him - to serve a parish and to grow old in that parish - to fight the hatred born of the 'Troubles' one soul at a time - to stop the cycle of bloody death and retribution.
But then along came Derek Rayne, who showed me that evil was something tangible - that there were demons and very real abominations with a physical essence that could be openly battled. Here were monsters that could be vanquished with holy water, incantations, and magical swords - just like in the faerie stories. How much easier it seemed to fight this way - a little physical combat, a Pater Noster, a dab of sacred oil, and poof! Problem solved - no wrestling the hatred that lay within some poor soul, who was mourning the brutal death of a brother or a son, and had every right to hate the murderers - and wish an eye for an eye. God knows, Michael's death taught me the inner workings of that kind of insidious, soul tainting evil.
But I didn't understand the nature of the Beast. I should have. I'm not a stupid man. I should have wondered more at the haunted look I'd sometimes see in Derek's eyes. I chalked it up to having seen too much death, lived through too much grief. It wasn't unlike the look I'd seen in hundreds of eyes in Belfast and Derry. I didn't understand that each time we confronted this palpable evil, we were engaged in a battle for our own souls. Each time we touched it, even in our own victory, we were poisoned by it - infected by a virus that lies dormant until a moment when our strength is weak. Then, it surges forth to overwhelm all our defenses. Only later did I realize how strong we had to be in ourselves - our own soul had to be strong enough to say, 'No! I will never yield! Though the Light be gone, though faith be gone, though God himself be gone, I will never yield!'
I have a soul that is pure cussedness. I love a good barney - always have - perhaps that's what Derek saw in me. But I discovered a fear within myself that one day I'd yield. Each time I touched the Darkness I felt a bit more of the wall crumble, or at least I thought I did. After a while I began to convince myself that Derek and the Legacy had set itself up as judge, jury, and executioner. How could they always be so certain that they were right. What of their own sins? What of my sins in the name of righteousness? I didn't realize that it was the only way they could continue the battle. Even now Nick will always defend my courage. Well, perhaps, not now. But he chose to accept, even if he didn't understand, all my philosophical babble about guilt and the Legacy's omnipotent decisions. They're all part and parcel of the same fear, which he would never accept was there - for if I could surrender to the Darkness, so could Derek - and so can Nick Boyle.
Derek and I used to play chess. Inevitably, the chess game would turn into a theological discussion. How easy it was to forget that one of his doctorates was in Theology - there I was a Jesuit priest, who would blindly step into one of Derek's logic traps - and off we'd go into the realms of faith and the essence of mankind, the universe, good, and evil. Yet when I asked him what he really believed, the only answer I could ever get was that mixture of Tao and ancient Judaic simplicity. 'For every darkness in life, there is light. For every evil, there is good. There is a God in heaven.' Such a simple, yet profound creed.
I would argue that all those doctrines that bordered on that - Manichaism, deism, Gnosticism, dualism - had been rejected by the Church. He said the Church could do as it pleased, but he chose not to explain the existence of evil - simply to accept its universal presence and to fight it every chance he got. Trying to explain the nature of all the petty and great evils of the world, only raised more questions, and thus the terminal illness of doubt. He said that if he did not believe in the yin and yang of good and evil, and that his side was the side of right, and of the Light, then he might succumb to the futility of it all. So his only solution lay in those three, bare sentences - they were his life preserver in a sea of doubt and turmoil.
When I first left the San Francisco House, I pled that I could not serve two masters - God and the Legacy. I pled that my calling lay elsewhere - service as a parish priest - like I'd planned so long ago - before Derek Rayne. That was partly the truth. I did want to serve as a parish priest with my own congregation, whom I could come to know on a personal level. I could have my daily routine of ritual, of teaching, of pastoral duties in the happy events, and the sad. But it wasn't the whole truth. I turned my back. I didn't let my parishioners down. I never missed a bingo game, Sunday School class, or football match. Heard all the confessions and never failed to conduct the earliest mass. But, I let my friends down when it was life and death and more than death. How do I absolve myself of that? What penance will suffice? Would a million Hail Mary's atone for my callousness? Would a billion Pater Nosters make up for Julia's death or Kristin's or Derek's?
I think I must return to the battle, but not to the Legacy's battle, nor to the Church's, but to my own. This time my sword must be compassion, and my faith will be my warhorse, not the shield behind which I hide. Faith will be my companion in the face of despair. They speak of another famine in Ethiopia by summer, perhaps there - or Central Africa - Botswana, or maybe Zimbabwe, where 1 in 4 adults carries HIV - where it's regarded as a stigma of filth and shame. Someplace where all those children have no one but each other, and where they will probably die before they see 20. Where hatred and disease blossoms, where there is scarce food, little medicine and less hope - that is where I must seek my penance, heal my soul, and wage my own war against the Darkness. Would Derek approve I wonder? I think so.
Again his words come to me: For every darkness in life, there is light. For
every evil, there is good. There is a God in heaven, and our dear friend, Derek
Rayne, had earned a place by His side. These are the only things in this universe
that I know with absolute certainty. Pax Dei tecum. Amen.
| Next |
| CONTENTS |
| E-mail: Dubricus |
