In putting together my book of essays, I painfully came to my problem child, “World’s Ugliest Man.” It will be the longest essay in the book at 5, 000 words, which makes it un-publishable in regular journals, but that’s not the problem. The problem is the ending, for there was a very definitive ending.
It takes place in the back woods of northeast Vermont near the cabin some friends built (with a little help from me) back in the 1970’s, near where a “greatest generation” guy from Boston had also made his own place to live, and to retire. He was a WWII vet who had been blown apart in the war against Japan, and then had been painstakingly stitched together over many long and probably painful months. They had not been plastic surgeons. His face was left an ugly quilt, almost too much to believe. Over the years, we got used to Al and we always visited his place every time we took the long walk into the woods to get to the cabin.
The core of the essay took place one night when I was returning from town with a bottle of wine and one of rum. He invited me in for stew, and that began a great drinking fest that left both of us floored. During this time, he told me of how he had stalked the killer of his mother and had killed him himself, burying him in one of the great cranberry bogs of eastern Massachusetts. Past midnight, I finally left for the cabin with my parent’s dog, still drunk, where I had to cross a pond first before climbing a steep hill. It was late October and the pond was covered with skim ice. Once most of the way across, I noticed the headlights of an SUV coming down the broken logging trail to the cabin, which was almost impassible (so much so that it was easier to take the canoe than to walk). I yelled up to the vehicle in surprise, suspecting foul play, which made the dog jump to the edge of the canoe and tip us over. Completely taken by surprise, my heavy boots and backpack sent me plunging 15 feet or so to the bottom of the pond, which was ice cold and completely dark, where I had the presence of mind not to breathe, to take off the backpack, and to kick off from the bottom to surface. I swam the canoe to the shore, then stumbled in the dark forest to the cabin, whose door had been kicked in.
Years later, I heard that Al had developed prostate cancer, which he was not going to fight, declaring bluntly, “I’m checkin’ out.” Which he did a few months later. The crux of the problem for me in the essay was this: both Al and I should have died years earlier in our respective adventures, yet we were saved by near-miracles – but why? He had gone on to live a hermit life interspersed with family visits and squabbles, while I had not exactly lit up the world. So many others would have been better to save, but instead, WE were. Why?
In the essay, I could only end by saying, “In the end, Al had to know; in the ugly patchwork of his life, in the end I know that he must have understood.” Yes, but understood what?
In a book I am reading now, Things Hidden by Fr Richard Rohr, one of his greatest themes resides around grace. By definition, grace is not earned or begged, but freely given by God. Rohr recounts several Biblical figures, most notably David, who was picked to be King of Israel from the last and least of the sons, and who sinned egregiously, at one point allowing a man to die in battle to protect himself from the scandal of having impregnated this poor man’s wife. And yet David knew that, good or bad, evil or holy, he was God’s chosen – and indeed his own life was always shrouded by grace in spite of himself.
David had a mission for God, of course, but the lesson is that God gives his grace freely, as is His will, whether we understand it or not. Usually we do not. And that, I now understand, is what Al finally learned: about a fundamental nature of God, not from mind or rationality, but from ways spiritual, as Paul put it, for the spiritual can only be known in its own way. And it can be known, but rather as men and women “know” one another in sex, as the Bible puts it. It is a mystery, yes, but knowable in the spiritual way.
In trying to understand my own survival, I have often looked at my life to see if somehow there was a logic to my personal miracle. There is none, at least as far as I can know. Perhaps a great grandchild shall save the world or find the cure for cancer, but how can I know? Rather, it is, during life at least, something to be understood only as grace, and to be grateful for it, regardless of the meaning – if there is any. Rather it is the lesson we must learn, as Fr Rohr would put it; the lesson that grace is given freely, as it must since none are deserving, but freely, from a God that we are finding through slow learning who is more anxious to come to us than we are to him; for a God that maybe really is not about sin and penance, but about the mystery that some call grace. FK
It takes place in the back woods of northeast Vermont near the cabin some friends built (with a little help from me) back in the 1970’s, near where a “greatest generation” guy from Boston had also made his own place to live, and to retire. He was a WWII vet who had been blown apart in the war against Japan, and then had been painstakingly stitched together over many long and probably painful months. They had not been plastic surgeons. His face was left an ugly quilt, almost too much to believe. Over the years, we got used to Al and we always visited his place every time we took the long walk into the woods to get to the cabin.
The core of the essay took place one night when I was returning from town with a bottle of wine and one of rum. He invited me in for stew, and that began a great drinking fest that left both of us floored. During this time, he told me of how he had stalked the killer of his mother and had killed him himself, burying him in one of the great cranberry bogs of eastern Massachusetts. Past midnight, I finally left for the cabin with my parent’s dog, still drunk, where I had to cross a pond first before climbing a steep hill. It was late October and the pond was covered with skim ice. Once most of the way across, I noticed the headlights of an SUV coming down the broken logging trail to the cabin, which was almost impassible (so much so that it was easier to take the canoe than to walk). I yelled up to the vehicle in surprise, suspecting foul play, which made the dog jump to the edge of the canoe and tip us over. Completely taken by surprise, my heavy boots and backpack sent me plunging 15 feet or so to the bottom of the pond, which was ice cold and completely dark, where I had the presence of mind not to breathe, to take off the backpack, and to kick off from the bottom to surface. I swam the canoe to the shore, then stumbled in the dark forest to the cabin, whose door had been kicked in.
Years later, I heard that Al had developed prostate cancer, which he was not going to fight, declaring bluntly, “I’m checkin’ out.” Which he did a few months later. The crux of the problem for me in the essay was this: both Al and I should have died years earlier in our respective adventures, yet we were saved by near-miracles – but why? He had gone on to live a hermit life interspersed with family visits and squabbles, while I had not exactly lit up the world. So many others would have been better to save, but instead, WE were. Why?
In the essay, I could only end by saying, “In the end, Al had to know; in the ugly patchwork of his life, in the end I know that he must have understood.” Yes, but understood what?
In a book I am reading now, Things Hidden by Fr Richard Rohr, one of his greatest themes resides around grace. By definition, grace is not earned or begged, but freely given by God. Rohr recounts several Biblical figures, most notably David, who was picked to be King of Israel from the last and least of the sons, and who sinned egregiously, at one point allowing a man to die in battle to protect himself from the scandal of having impregnated this poor man’s wife. And yet David knew that, good or bad, evil or holy, he was God’s chosen – and indeed his own life was always shrouded by grace in spite of himself.
David had a mission for God, of course, but the lesson is that God gives his grace freely, as is His will, whether we understand it or not. Usually we do not. And that, I now understand, is what Al finally learned: about a fundamental nature of God, not from mind or rationality, but from ways spiritual, as Paul put it, for the spiritual can only be known in its own way. And it can be known, but rather as men and women “know” one another in sex, as the Bible puts it. It is a mystery, yes, but knowable in the spiritual way.
In trying to understand my own survival, I have often looked at my life to see if somehow there was a logic to my personal miracle. There is none, at least as far as I can know. Perhaps a great grandchild shall save the world or find the cure for cancer, but how can I know? Rather, it is, during life at least, something to be understood only as grace, and to be grateful for it, regardless of the meaning – if there is any. Rather it is the lesson we must learn, as Fr Rohr would put it; the lesson that grace is given freely, as it must since none are deserving, but freely, from a God that we are finding through slow learning who is more anxious to come to us than we are to him; for a God that maybe really is not about sin and penance, but about the mystery that some call grace. FK
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