Una Furtiva Lagrima

Good Friday 2006

A solitary man stands up to power. TankMan, a frontline documentary, remembers the images of this young Chinese Beijing resident standing alone in front of a column of tanks after the violent put down of protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. He stands alone in eloquent witness to the courage of a man who is willing to stand up to power. The extent of the massacres I did not know about included the senseless slaughter of young and old throughout the city during the days following the initial protests. We saw TankMan on Tuesday evening. We leave for China in two weeks.

A solitary man stands on stage, singing a mournful aria - Una Furtiva Lagrima - one furtive tear. Although it is about romantic love, and about some remorse over the power struggles of romantic love, it is also an eloquent witness, the noblest moment in an opera buffo brim full of silly narcissism. It is the noble, beautiful song that has kept this opera popular for well over 100 years. We saw Donizetti's L'Elisir d' Amore on Wednesday night.

A solitary man stands silent before Pilate, having stood his ground earlier before Pilate's puppets, the Temple administration in Jerusalem whose faithless kowtowing to Roman power makes a mockery of his God. His message: a man can love his neighbor, can serve his neighbor selflessly, and such love is greater than all the power of all the empires on earth. Today we celebrate the memory of Jesus' trial and execution, his witness that the courage to love is greater than all the "missions accomplished" and all the victory parades of all the empires of the world, including the one of which I am a privileged citizen. In a way it is disappointing that our Easter service will resemble Pilate's procession into Jerusalem more than it will the solitary man standing up to power with courage and sorrow.

Today also I will visit my parents' resting place in a lovely spot in Arlington Cemetary, a military cemetary. I visit them in the Spring, they each died in the Spring, a time of new life. And I will remember that they were generous and good to me during the long narcissistic struggles of my younger years.

With one furtive tear, una furtiva lagrima, I witness their love, I witness Jesus's love, courage and sorrow, and Tank Man's courage, sorrow, and love.

William Sloane Coffin died this week. Though seldom solitary, he knew how to stand up to power with courage and compassion. We remember him with admiration and with sorrow.

A becalmed windsurfer’s meditation

The ocean has long been one of my favorite metaphors for God - immense and overwhelming, nurturing and soothing at times, terrifying at times, and - when the afternoon sun sparkles on it’s wind tickled surface - beautifully complex in it’s never ending dance.

As the container ship passed while I was becalmed on my sailboard in the shipping lanes off Sandy Point in the Chesapeake Bay, I had a thought. This could have been it. They only missed me by 50 yards. I could have been sucked into the churning of the great propellers and blended into human gazpacho. But the ship was past, and I was watching the first of three waves of the wake grow to five feet and tower over me, sitting on my little piece of flotsam, waiting for a motivating breeze. And now they pass smoothly under me, lifting me effortlessly, and leaving me awed at the mass of the ship and the slow, silent power of the waves. The ship and the waves are dwarfed in their turn by the incomprehensible depths of the ocean stretching out of the bay and around the world. And now the waves of the wake are gone, lost in the myriad competition of energy patterns dancing up and down the bay, in and out of the estuary, and on to play in the vast fields of the sea.

Is my consciousness like the energy of a wave, having no matter to it, but giving shape and motion to the water; unable to generate itself or even to change its direction, but - in concert with other waves - able to make the great sea itself gentle or terrifying? And when the wave dies in a crash on the shore, it’s energy is dissipated and disappears into the mysterious pool of climactic patterns that contribute to the birth of storms. And new waves are born of the storms.

If I exist only as a twinkle of awareness on the crest of a wave of relatively organized energy, surging and ebbing for all I’m worth through this storm season I call my life, isn’t it silly to imagine that I have any power at all? Shall I be furious that I don’t roll along faster or in a different direction? Shall I be ashamed that other waves rumble over, under, and through me and confuse my shape for a while? Shall I be bitter that the direction of my life does not take me beside lovelier vistas? Shall I be sad when the relative organization of my energy is buffeted to pieces by endless confrontations with ships and shores? Or shall I be grateful for the contributions of other waves, that have lifted me higher at times, and for the redirection I am given in my encounters with the rocks along the coast?