Remember Fitz
LETTER FROM FITZ - 2022
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Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.
(Cornel West)
December 20, 2022
My friends:
At this year's Kennedy Center Honors in early December (the telecast still to come on Dec. 28th on CBS), Nick Clooney (Rosemary's brother and George's father), reminiscing on how his son had always had a bleeding heart about peace and justice issues, told this story. In 1968, when George was only 7, Mayor Joe Alioto of San Francisco, following the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, invited people to turn in their firearms. Little George, his eyes brimming with tears, brought his plastic toy guns to his dad to aid the effort. I'm not sure what became of George's donation, but thousands of the real, metal ones were melted down and SF sculptor Benny Bufano turned them into a statue of Saint Francis that now sits on the campus of SF City College.
Even back when I was about the same age as little George Clooney, I think I already knew that Advent and December were about waiting. But it took years (decades!) before I had a clue as to what that meant. "Waiting with hope" I got. Not like waiting in line (always, it seems, on the top ten items on most people's "things I dislike" list.) More like waiting for help, like in an Emergency Room, or anticipating with delight the music soon to begin when house lights dim. It's only in this 4th quarter of my life that I began to grasp that Hanukkah and Advent are really about subversive hope. The kind of hope that becomes Maccabean confidence that the temple's oil supply will outlast the hate and stamina of Greco/Syrian oppressors. And the simple devotion and determination in the heart of a teenage girl in Nazareth that overcomes fear and swells with delight as she realizes her pregnancy might just have cosmic consequences. You know her words. "Magnificat anima meal" (Latin, of course. Haven't any idea how to say it in the Galilean Aramaic dialect Nazarenes spoke.) MY SOUL MAGNIFIES!
Dorothy Day was fond of saying that ''There is more revolution in Mary's "Magnificat" than in the entire Communist Manifesto!" (He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty handed.)
My soul magnifies! And the beat goes on. In hearts and souls everywhere! Moments when darkness is vanquished, wherever good people stand up to evil at whatever cost. Witness the people of Ukraine
When truly lovely, even glorious, peak experiences reverse the ordinary and humdrum. MY SOUL MAGNIFIES. When young volunteers are enthralled with joy, serving dinner to persons who have lost their housing at Andre' House in Phoenix, or at St. Anthony's in San Francisco. When a ritual moment, even when it's Zoomed, graces the spirits of seekers and believers and their hearts swell. When a teacher sees a smile light up the face of a student when (s)he finally "gets it". Whenever hope replaces hunger. You know. Chicken Soup for the soul. I've learned that often a filling belly is in sync with a swelling spirit. Not just from food and drink, but with music and poetry and learning and certainly with sport. (Did you see those crowds rejoicing in Buenos Aires?) Here are some soul-magnifying moments in my recent past.
+ Hearing a performance of Mahler's 2nd (Resurrection) by the SF Symphony that was as much sacrament as music-making
+ Joining my friends from Roman Catholic Women Priests for a live, in person experience of liturgy rather than the Zoomed ones the pandemic forced upon us. And our ongoing awareness that we are part of that "great cloud of witnesses" that Doctor King spoke about.
+ Staying up really late because I just had to see Brittney Griner step off that plane and on to American soil.
+ A Met Opera in High Def theater telecast of a brand new opera, The Hours, that actually SANG! (Why must that be such an unusual experience?)
+ A young couple, on their honeymoon, insisting on helping me carry my groceries down the Filbert steps (37 of them) from the bus stop further up Telegraph Hill.
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+ The deaths of woof my Notre Dame HS classmates. One, Bob Goldberg, was a legendary trader in Chicago, became the Chair of the Board of Trade, then retired early to coach the basketball team at a small, poor girls' Catholic high school on the South Side. The other, Dave Schlaver, like me, became a Holy Cross priest. In high school I accompanied him as he played fiendishly difficult Oboe pieces in various State music "contests". (The piano parts weren't exactly easy either.) Later he ministered at a bunch of different sites, especially the one where he left his enlarged heart, in Bangladesh. Both men died shortly after reaching their 80th birthdays. I think my longtime friend, Tom Muldoon, and I are the only two Class of '60 guys still waiting (subversively with swelling hearts) that milestone birthday.
At Christmas, and in the New Year, I hope your hearts swell often and both inspire and heal you! Meanwhile I send you lots of love from Telegraph Hill in the City of Saint Francis.
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