Flunking Sainthood Page 13

  Benedictine hospitality is not about sipping tea and making bland talk with people who live next door or work with you. Hospitality is a lively, courageous, and convivial way of living that challenges our compulsion either to turn away or to turn inward and disconnect ourselves from others.

  —FATHER DANIEL HOLMAN AND LONNI COLLINS PRATT

  WELCOMING THE STRANGER AND THE FRIEND

  “Would you mind taking Patches for a few days?” inquires my friend Shay, a confirmed dog lover like myself. She and her family are heading out for a long weekend, and they can’t bring their pound dog of dubious ancestry (part miniature Doberman/part beagle/100 percent insane) with them. Aha! A genuine hospitality opportunity. I readily agree.

  When Shay drops Patches off, she confesses that the dog recently got into her son’s medication and has been having a touch of diarrhea. “But I don’t think it will be a problem,” she reassures me as she heads out the door. And I believe her, because Shay is a doctor, and doctors wouldn’t minimize symptoms like diarrhea. Would they?

  They would.

  Patches turns out to be a pooping machine.

  She poops outside when and where she is supposed to, yes. But for good measure she also poops on the kitchen floor, in the basement, in my office, and on the carpeted landing. She poops in out-of-the-way places, like under my desk, probably because in normal times she is a well-trained dog who knows that it is forbidden to conduct such business in the house. Phil and I resort to confining her to the kitchen when we’re asleep or out of the house, but she doesn’t take to that one bit, whining and scratching for release. She craves our company and does not wish to be alone.

  So it probably shouldn’t surprise us when one day Patches makes a run for it. We’ve become spoiled with Onyx, who is the laziest dog in Ohio if not the entire United States of America. Onyx could be off leash his whole life and never give you a moment’s anxiety. We’ve forgotten what real dogs can be like. They actually run after squirrels instead of sniffing in their wake with serene interest.

  Patches senses her freedom when Phil is hooking up Onyx at the front door for the dogs’ walk, and she’s out like a shot, leash trailing and bumping behind her. What ensues is a madcap Tom-and-Jerry chase scene in which Phil, Jerusha, and a neighbor give hot pursuit. “Catch her!” Phil cries to the neighbor, who hastily jumps from his porch and attempts to grab the leash. But Patches is too fast for them, streaking ahead with exuberant zeal. It takes four people a full twenty minutes to get the dog to succumb to a bribe of grilled chicken.

  I’ve missed the whole fiasco because I’m on a business trip. I’m sorry that I left my family to bear the brunt of my hospitality experiment, but also secretly relieved to have missed the hunt, as well as some of the pooping and subsequent cleanup.

  “You owe me big-time,” Phil declares grimly upon my return. It’s not just the dogsitting he’s talking about; my family is also about to visit, along with our friend Edward from England. Phil loves them all, but for an introvert all these visitors are just overwhelming. He needs some space.

  It’s the first time we’ve ever hosted Edward, though he’s been to visit my mom and we’ve all been to England to visit him. If you were to try to choose the world’s most easygoing person on whom to practice your hospitality, Edward would fit the bill. Though nearing seventy, his activity level puts me to shame (A ten-mile hike with other pensioners? No problem!). Still, he’s old enough that nothing quite fazes him. There’s an air of bemused tranquility about him.

  The visit doesn’t quite begin according to plan because I’ve managed to forget that Edward is a vegetarian. How did I overlook that? I once gave him a copy of The Moosewood Cookbook, for heaven’s sake, and yet I’ve cooked a chicken for his first night and planned a roast for tomorrow. So thoughtless. Instead, Edward eats a can of split pea soup for his first meal with us, but at least I can rescue dessert: I’ve made a delicious sour cream pound cake, the fussy kind where you have to separate the egg yolks and then whip up the whites until they’re stiff but not dry. For once, I did it just right. The cake is perfection.

  “Oh, thanks so much, but none for me,” Edward declares after his tinned soup. “I don’t really eat sugar, much.”

  Not . . . eat . . . sugar? This is news.

  “Oh!” I reply, startled. “Is this a new health restriction?” How awful for him.

  “Well, no, I just never developed a taste for it.”

  “Really, nothing? No cake, no cookies, no candy . . . ?” It is a sign of how saturated American culture is with sugar that I am desperately sympathetic for his plight. I try to remember back to our visit to England. Come to think of it, Phil and I were the ones downing Cadbury chocolate after almost every meal. I don’t recall Edward joining in.

  Phil attempts a stab of humor, carrying forward a running joke about Edward’s age. “What, they didn’t have sugar way back when you were a kid?” he laughs. Edward does not laugh.

  “Actually, that’s right. There was no sugar to be had in the shops until I was about ten, and by then it just tasted terribly sweet to me and I couldn’t get on with it at all,” he explains. World War II for him meant, among other things, a childhood with no sugar. Jerusha thinks it sounds like something out of a grisly fairy tale.

  Throughout Edward’s long visit, he continues to politely decline the sweets, perhaps with a twinkle in his blue eyes. For me this engenders a valuable lesson in hospitality: making guests feel welcome is about allowing them to be who they are, not who you want them to be. I want Edward to join me in having a brownie, or perhaps eleven, but this is not his identity.

  I understand that one dimension of hospitality is not trying to change people, but sometimes that’s not easy. After Edward has been with us for several days, my mother and brother join us. Mom and Edward resume a friendship that has spanned four decades, since she was an exchange student in England in the 1960s. It’s a rare treat to spend time with my big brother, who’s perfectly lousy about keeping in touch though he will occasionally deign to text me. Yet I’ve forgotten how much his smoking bothers me; I hate the smell that lingers by the back door, on his clothes, in the trash can where he’s dumped his butts. John knows that he can’t smoke in the house, and he’s always respectful of that rule. He’s also aware that I don’t approve of his smoking, if my hundreds of subtle hints through the last twenty years are any indication.

  “You know those things are going to give you lung cancer,” I chide him during his first evening. He has lugged his latest ginormous history book out to the deck and is settling in for a smoke and a nice long read. His brown hair, released from its ponytail, tumbles forward into his eyes. He probably wants to be alone to read and enjoy the sunset, but he is too sweet a person to say so.

  “Nah. That’s why I smoke this healthier brand, Natural American Spirit,” he responds. This repartee is our comforting, ongoing ritual. “No additives. Those additives can kill you, man.”

  This is the part where I’m supposed to make a witty comeback about how I’ve heard about a minor ingredient called nicotine that can exterminate you, too. Instead, I provide him with an ashtray to use on the deck, and bring forward the most comfortable chair. It’s a small gesture, but I can tell he appreciates it. He knows I haven’t suddenly embraced the fallacy that smoking is great for him, but I want him to feel comfortable in my home, to feel loved. And to come back.

  My small efforts at making my friends and family feel comfortable in our home are pleasant, but I have a nagging suspicion that they are superficial. What becomes increasingly clear as the visit progresses is how appallingly busy Phil and I are. Real hospitality requires a certain flexibility, and flexibility requires time. I, on the other hand, have an ironclad to-do list at the start of each day, and I keep having to cut short a conversation or beg off a sightseeing visit in order to produce, accomplish, cross things off. (Apparently I retained little spiritual value from my month of Sabbath keeping, because although I don’t work on Sundays, I still
define myself by the old Pharaoh standard of productivity.)

  I sense that Edward thinks that Americans are ridiculously over-scheduled, and he’s right. I had hoped to take more time off for his and my family’s visit, but by the time the date long circled on the calendar actually arrives, I’m behind in my work and have to forego a couple of day trips just to catch up. We do try to do things together in the evenings, like going to Eden Park to see a free outdoor production of As You Like It. During the daytime, though, my family’s life feels relentlessly overprogrammed.

  My master is of churlish disposition

  And little recks to find the way to heaven

  By doing deeds of hospitality.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, As You Like It

  Edward is very understanding, but I know I’m not living up to the Rule of St. Benedict, which wants me to receive every guest as I would welcome Christ himself. The truth is that if Christ did knock on my front door seeking entrance, I’d have to pencil him in for sometime in the future, like maybe when I am retired or dead.

  I’m enjoying Benedictine hospitality more than almost any other practice I’ve attempted this year, but I also mourn the loss of private time. Instead of vegging out in front of the TV in the evening or retreating to my room with a book, I feel I should engage our guests in conversation or plan something for their entertainment. The strange thing is that while I suspect at least some of them would prefer to be left alone and I’d rather have some time alone too, I can’t quite give them that space. What am I, a control freak?

  I’ve been on retreats at Benedictine monasteries before, and part of the joy is in how much they leave you to your own devices. If you want to talk with a monk or spiritual director you can, but you have to request it. If you want to meet other retreatants, you can eat dinner in a room designated for conversation; if not, you can read a book or sit in silence during dinner and no one thinks it’s rude. I love the freedom and flexibility of the monastery, but it’s harder than it looks to create that do-as-you-please environment for my own guests. They have such different needs. My mom would like nothing better than to talk all evening; my brother wants to play a computer game; Edward would probably like to read but seems open to other activities, so is easy prey when Jerusha comes hunting for someone to play cards with her; Phil wants to work on the bathroom renovation; and I would enjoy curling up to watch The Daily Show before bed.

  Around the time I’m feeling spiritually deficient for not being the perfect embodiment of Benedictine hospitality, I receive an encouraging message from an old seminary friend I haven’t heard from in years. In reconnecting, she does more than remind me of old times; she helps me return to the core of what hospitality should be about. She and her husband, now Methodist pastors, used to be frequent guests at our apartment for dinner, especially our annual “widows and orphans” Thanksgiving potluck, which she remembers fondly.

  “Your houseful of people who had nowhere else to go for the holiday has actually shown up in our sermons several times as an example of the Kingdom of God!” she writes. “But, if imitation is the highest form of flattery, then I guess I’ll tell you this . . . because of you and Phil, each year we make it a point to invite people to our dinner who will be alone on Thanksgiving. We have a tiny place (as you remember) but so did you when you hosted it. This year, we will have 13! We will be borrowing tables and chairs from church and having a great day. Thank you so much for the influence you both had on our life and celebration.”

  Hospitality is a gift that keeps on giving, as other people pay it forward in a spirit of cascading generosity. My hospitality doesn’t have to be perfect to be effective at helping people feel loved. It is through hospitality that we come to know one another and maybe even glimpse the face of God. I’m reminded of the fact that after his resurrection, Jesus’ own disciples didn’t recognize him until after they had broken bread with him. It was only following a shared meal that they truly saw him.

  I think St. Benedict is on to something.

  10

  October

  what would Jesus eat?

  It behooves us, therefore, piously to venerate the piety of that

  blessed man [St. Francis], by whose marvelous sweetness and

  power ferocious beasts were quelled, wild animals tamed, and the

  nature of brutes, rebellious to man since his fall, was

  sweetly inclined to his obedience.

  —ST. BONAVENTURE

  “Let me get this straight.” Lauren peers at me through her Far Side glasses, her eyes intense as she regards me with equal parts exasperation and amusement. “You’re going to stop eating meat altogether?”

  “Well, just for one month. And then I think I’m going to go back to eating meat, but on a much smaller scale, with several vegetarian meals a week,” I say.

  “You already don’t drink alcohol and coffee, and you don’t smoke,” Lauren points out. “Now this. Are you ever going to get to do anything fun?”

  I’d like to reply that I’m a barrel of laughs despite my abstemious lifestyle, but it occurs to me that if you have to point out to your close friends how fun you ostensibly are, you’re probably not all that much fun. But Lauren loves me, quirks and all. She listens as I explain why I’m going to spend a month avoiding my good friend, Mr. Porterhouse.

  It all started a couple of years ago when I went to a luncheon sponsored by the National Humane Society. Over the meal, our crowd of journalists watched a brief documentary about factory farming while we ate a lunch that looked and tasted suspiciously like it had been concocted from the very chickens we saw being oppressed on a large screen. I actually stopped eating the main course, and when the announcement was made during dessert that the meal had actually been a grain-based chicken substitute, I was relieved to have spared Clucky even while I regretted not getting to finish my portion before it was cleared away.

  The documentary was eye-opening. One scene showed a suckling pig being torn from its mother, both of them literally screaming at the forced parting. I wanted to flee the room. The film also showed some of the pens that pigs are kept in. The pigs had no room to move from side to side, nowhere to lie down, no way to scratch themselves—only six inches of extra space in which to step forward or backward in their cages during their entire adult lives—lives that clearly weren’t destined to end well.

  Although the documentary was undoubtedly propagandistic, it made an impression. I’m a small-town Midwesterner by rights. I grew up not far from Kewanee, Illinois, the proud Hog Capital of the World, where every Labor Day weekend the residents grill and serve fifty thousand pork chops. All around western Illinois, pig farms with hundreds of tiny lean-tos rested in the fertile black earth. Every hog was the king of its domain, with a hut of its own and plenty of room to wander the farm. I had naively imagined such blissful independence to be normative for pigs.

  You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

  —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

  So, for the month of October, I’m not going to eat any meat, though as an entrenched milkoholic I reserve the right to binge on milk, cheese, yogurt, and eggs. I expiate a portion of the guilt by buying cage-free eggs, but there’s no way I’m ready for Vegan Prime Time. Eliminating meat from my diet is enough of a sea change for the moment.

  ST. FRANCIS

  Although what pushes me into vegetarianism is an inflamed social conscience, I’m eager to explore its religious roots. Plenty of people take on vegetarianism because of their political or social beliefs, but what about vegetarianism as a spiritual practice?

  October kicks off with a beloved annual tradition—taking Onyx to be blessed. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, we all head over to Phil’s church to join a parade of dogs, cats, gerbils, hamsters, and assorted reptiles. The event is always held on the church’s front steps so that passersby can grab a quick blessing while Fido’s out for a walk. After the congregation
sings some kid-friendly ditties about creation, the priests go around the crowd and pronounce lovely blessings on each animal, invoking the saintly benediction of St. Francis, whose feast day this is.

  I’ve always liked St. Francis, the patron saint of animals. My friend Judy has a modest sculpture of him in her garden, flanked by a lamb at his side and a dove on his shoulder. It’s reassuring to know our furry friends have their own patron saint. This month, I am going to read St. Bonaventure’s classic biography of St. Francis, which is the first saint-on-saint biography I’ve ever read. It turns out to be hagiography in every sense of the word: naturally, the book wants to portray Francis in the best possible light, as does any hagiography worth its salt. But since it’s written by Bonaventure, who was destined to become a saint himself, it proves incapable of criticism. It’s a positively treacly biography. I guess such generosity of character explains why Bonaventure got to be a saint, and why I never will.

  I get a fuller picture of Francis’s early life, which includes the more controversial pieces, by reading other biographies. Apparently shortly after his death in 1226, unauthorized works began appearing that were a little too forthcoming about Francis’s youthful, preconversion debauchery. Bonaventure’s 1260 biography represents the church’s official attempts to put the kibosh on these more colorful accounts of wine, women, and song.

  The basic contours of Francis’s life story remind me of the Buddha’s: both men were born into moderately wealthy families, learned the centrality of pleasure, and became what we might call partiers in young adulthood. However, both came to recognize the aching emptiness of even the best things this world has to offer. Once awakened to the suffering of others, both made a spectacular show of rejecting wealth and the fathers who had taught them to love it, the Buddha by fleeing his father’s palace for a life of asceticism and Francis by stripping naked in the town square and returning his fancy clothes to his angry, astonished father.