Each week at my high school, at morning prayer, a different teacher had three consecutive days to tell us a story, read something, offer a lesson, things of that nature. One such morning prayer stuck with me and my siblings, and we asked our teacher if he remembered it. He graciously copied it down again for us, and I reprint it here. Thank you, Tim.
1
Four things to remember.
First—Homer uses epithets. Menelaus of the great war cry; Lord of men, Agamemnon; Hector, breaker of horses; Ajax, bulwark of the Achaeans.
But his phrase for Odysseus is the one to remember. He’s sometimes called 'a complicated man', or 'a man of twists and turns.’ The one to hold onto is this, 'Odysseus, the man of many devices.'
Second—I have an Israeli friend named Tamir. He is a bulldog of a man, a trumpet player, sometimes a warehouse worker, did his time in the Israeli Army. He says many things, but the thing to remember is something we all used to imitate, because he would finish a long story or a diatribe or complaint and then follow it with, 'I don't know, you know?'
Odysseus, the man of many devices; and Tamir, saying, 'I don't know, you know?'
Third—In Mark's Gospel, after Jesus calms the storm in the boat, the disciples ask each other 'Who is this?' or as it’s sometimes translated, ‘What kind of man is this, that the winds and the waves obey him?' So that's the third thing, 'Who is this? What kind of man is this?' Odysseus, the man of many devices; and Tamir's 'I don't know, you know?'
Finally—the stars in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I went to undergrad in Cambridge and there are a number of bridges across the Charles. Me nor none of my friends owned a car. We took the T or the bus on longer trips, but usually we walked to school everyday, about two miles each way. And we always crossed the Charles on this bridge. It's a nice bridge, not quite a footbridge, but it feels like it, and it goes right into Harvard Square. It's what more bridges should be, simple and arched and made of stone.
I remember one evening, crossing it, heading back home with my roommate Adam. And we stopped on the bridge for some reason and looked up. It was October maybe, and it was just the last real blue of evening, when the stars are just beginning to appear. We stood there and looked up. You would see the stars out of the corner of your eye, but then when you moved your eye to catch them straight on, they would disappear and you would be looking into the blue. And again, other stars would appear on the edge of your sight, but when you moved to look, you lost them. Adam had the physiological reason, which I don't recall. But when I think of the evening blue, I think of that footbridge and October and the Charles River, and the stars in Cambridge, right on the edge of sight.
Odysseus, man of many devices; Tamirschka's phrase, I don't know, you know?'; the disciples asking, 'Who is this?'; and the stars in Cambridge.
2
Christmas of 2007, my little sister was in school in Marburg, Germany. My family met there and on our last evening, it was just my sister, my parents and myself. It was a Sunday evening, in fact, it was Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas. But we'd been to church and spent the day near my sister's dorm or in our rented rooms. It gets dark very early in Germany in January. We went out for our last dinner at a restaurant close to the center of town. It was dark and chilled and cloudy outside, but we went into this restaurant, and the lighting was beautiful, very low. The big dining room was simple, with small tables and white table cloths, and we were seated in a back room that had wood panel walls. There were perhaps six tables in that room. Very comfortable.
As we were finishing up dinner, a man came into the back room with his hand full of roses.
He was Turkish and there was an immediate chill, not because he was Turkish, or not just because of that, but because he was selling something. He had walked into the restaurant selling roses; not quite legal and he knew he would be kicked out in a minute, but he had walked in to see if he could get any takers. Everybody saw him and looked down at their plates or at their companions, nobody looked at him, nobody spoke to him. He stood there in the doorway of our little dining room for a second, then turned and walked out into the street.
Me and my sister and my folks sat there for a second, then my Dad said, 'Just a minute.' He stood up and followed the man out of the restaurant. My Mom looked at us and said, 'Your father's such a softy.' He was, and is. He really can't pass by the homeless or a down and out. And we knew he was going to buy some roses for my Mom and my sister, just because he felt badly for this guy that everyone had ignored.
The three of us went back to our dinner, but my Dad was gone longer than we expected, closer to ten minutes. Finally he came back into our dining room, but instead of two roses, he had the entire bunch in his hands, maybe eighteen roses. When we asked him what had happened he was chagrined. 'I just wanted two, but he sold me the whole bunch.'
'How much did you pay him, Skip?'
He shook his head, 'I don't know, twenty, thirty euros.'
We all laughed at my dad, the softy. But it was a problem, of course, because we were leaving the next day, back to the States.
'What are we going to do with these?'
But my sister was nineteen at the time and a Romantic. So as we stood up to leave, she began giving roses to everyone in our dining room. There was an engaged couple next to us, I remember, and maybe a young family. Everyone was very pleased, it was this thing, a young blonde-haired woman handing you a rose for no reason.
Then, over in the corner was a grad student, working on his laptop. My sister went over to him and asked if she could give him a rose. They spoke in German but it was clear that he refused it. My sister appealed to him, told him that she had too many and she needed to give them away.
No, he said.
"Come on,' she said. 'Everyone needs something beautiful in their life.'
Not me,' he said.
She shrugged and walked back to us, we put on our scarf's and coats, but as we walked out of our little room, the grad student said, in English, 'Beauty must die.’
'Für einige,' my sister said. 'For some.'
And we walked out into the full dining room.
3
So we walked into the dining room, threading our way between tables. My sister was walking ahead and my folks and I were following. She veered off to the side and went to an older lady, maybe seventy, white-haired, eating at a table by herself. My parents and I couldn't hear, but my sister offered her a rose and the woman jerked her hand up to her mouth, like she was trying to catch a sob before it got out. My sister asked her something and the woman spoke for a little, and my sister gave her another rose, then they said goodbye and my sister came over to us and we all left the restaurant and stepped out into the street.
We asked my sister about it. The woman had said her husband was dying, he would die tonight maybe or tomorrow morning. She had been waiting by his bed for the last 72 hours and had just stepped out to eat, this was the first break she had taken. After this she was going back to watch with him while he died.
This really happened in Marburg on 7 January 2007, on the feast of the Epiphany.
Epiphany, the feast of God appearing among us--we celebrate the adoration of the magi, and Christ's baptism, and the wedding at Cana. When I think of this night, though, I can't help but feel that we experienced a sort of appearance ourselves. Do I think Christ was there, in that restaurant? Yes. How? I'm not sure. Well, where was he? Was he the Turk everybody ignored, or my dad helping the man out, or my sister giving, or the woman whose husband was dying?
Like my friend Tamir, I have to say: I don't know, you know?'
If someone had been taping, would they have seen him? I don't think so. I don't think it works like that, it's not something we can look at, not directly never for long, only something we can ever catch sight of, like the stars in Cambridge. And so I ask with the disciples, Who is this? What kind of man is this?'
It's Jesus, the Son of the Father; Jesus the son of Mary; Jesus the man of many devices.
what kind of highschool did you go to? beautiful to have mornings like this...