|
Docta Ignorantia LXIV How I Got To Be A Bus Driver! Wasn't easy! :-) Started in late 60s when I wondered just what the hell a theologian was going to do with their life in this secularized environment. Tried the futurist/communications consultant bit even before graduating seminary but theoretical interest got so far ahead of the market that I made myself useless. In 1972 I told IBM, where I had relatives in high places, there would be computers in homes. The chip wasn't invented yet, although we discovered later that it was being developed right then. Saw the only place that could use me would be a Rand or SIR or the like and an SIR guy actually contacted me in the early 70s, heard me on a radio talk show in the Bay area where I had gone for the purpose. Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and their daughter Catherine tried in early 70s to rope me into the academic/system theory orbit but I pulled out of that. I really didn't know what to do. I was on the verge of being famous in several directions simultaneously -- except in the church, who had already decided I wasn't a "team player," which I wasn't/am not, as I've already explained (not a homosexual). But I had a core want, which was to be a monastic. That really was what I wanted. I explored the Anglican Franciscans but they said I lived a more Franciscan life than they did so I decided that would be a waste of time. Besides, there where children inside me, something Mary had seen before I did. So the question I faced was how to be monastic in a married condition. I had to invent. I had coined the phrase "family monasticism" during informal talks with a Baptist clergyman in the late 60s and somehow that stuck. So by 1975, when I had rejected all the fame and wealth -- I had married a member of the New York Social Register, who died of cancer a year later, contributing to my monastic impulses -- and knew I didn't want any part of it -- I had to make them not want me, incidentally, in order to get away from them, so strong was their desire to have me for their pet -- I was in a worldly way at the end of my rope emotionally and also financially, literally not knowing what to do except that I knew I wanted to be a monastic and had to rear a family. Enter Mary, 1975, a true life romance so vivid it would make a great movie. Truly God-sent. We had nothing and soon had no where to lay our heads -- the church I served as organist threw us out for immoral behavior, shacking up -- and along came a child in 1977, whom I named for St. Jerome, and then another in 1979, whom I named for General MacArthur and then another in 1980, whom I named for St. Francis. We were very poor in a worldly way but very rich in love, very rich in love. God was with us all the time, as if to guard us, and we never went without food or clothing somehow. Our housing was not what either of us was used to for many years, but it got better gradually. We always had food and clothes enough. We hand fed each child every meal until they reached nine years. I had observed this custom in India and liked it. Mary is the ideal mother. The children all have very high character and that is from her. Each child underwent a "Giving to God" ceremony and baptism by myself on their 9th Birthday. We sat each in turn in front of the household (monastery) shrine (oratory) and offered them to God as His Own, Mary and I being only the caretakers for Him. We had always taught the children that their real mother and father is God. On the 9th Birthday I baptized them and we formally declared them God's own, us as caretakers. Very moving, very true. Well, I cast about at odd jobs from 1975 to 1979 trying to find what to do. Mary was our constant, as waitress, which she did until just a few years ago. We never put the children in day care. One of us was always home. This meant I worked part time for many years. Finally, in 1979, I thought of bus driving as an occupation and from the start it worked, as none others had. I had polio when a child (1949) so I never had the physique for strenuous labor and bus driving fit the bill. But it took long to think of it. We moved here in 1983 to get away from air conditioning and have not wanted to leave since. Through the palpable Grace of God I started with Metro in 1984, staying part time for 11 years to homeschool the children and then going full time in 1995. I could have gone full time in 1986, but the children's education would have suffered. I've never had a preventable accident, never been late to work and never been written up for a rule infraction. The one thing I did have that couldn't be taken away was cultured taste and I wanted to pass that on to the children and feel I did. The world will be improved by each of them in their own calling, so Mary and I feel we have been privileged to caretake them. They are not ordinary people. They have high missions, were kept from harm by God for that purpose during the extremities we had perforce to undergo. It is none of our credit, it is God's. The security work for Metro came last year when I was asked by my boss to join the committee at our base tasked with security. My natural pro-activity asserted itself and she allowed me enough rein to get a whole lot of work done, and it's not done yet. I canvassed the situation and quickly saw that security structures were essentially non-existent company-wide and went to work building them. I compared the situation to needing to plumb a house that has none, the house already being filled with sewage and with more being added daily. Reminded me of George Kenney taking over in Brisbane and having to get his planes flying, move his bases forward into the fight and fight a desperate battle all at the same time. We've done a good job and I see the end of my involvement looming, the company-wide built-in synergies already working and the thing living beyond my participation. Back to the "monastery," my in-most impulse. We call our home Adwaitha Hermitage. Adwaitha is a Sanskrit word which means Not Two. The meaning is that here there is never a sense of duality or separation or estrangement. Love rules. At least, that is our hope. As you well know, that is the calling of monastics, who are the point for humanity. I hope this has helped answer your question and isn't too long. Thanks for asking! Good for me to have to articulate .... :-)
Adwaitha Hermitage
|
