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| Home||Benedictine Sisters of Erie||Catalogue||Joan in the News||Contact Benetvision Fund for Prisoners||Retreats||About Benetvision||Ideas in Passing Benetvision • 355 East Ninth Street • Erie, PA 16503-1107 • Phone 814-459-5994 benetvision@benetvision.org • Fax 814-459-8066 Copyrighted © 2007 Benedictine Sisters of Erie, PA |
Abandoned Places
No alarm awakens me at 5 a.m., just habit. In the dark I kiss my rosary and put it on the
nightstand. All is quiet. I sit. Only candlelight and an icon of the Black Madonna. “Mercy,
mercy, mercy,” I pray. Let the mercy of God rain down. Mercy on the corner bar. Mercy on
the crack house down the street. Mercy on the prostitute coming home with money to feed
her children. Mercy on the children sleeping through a winter storm, rags stuffed in their
bedroom windows. Mercy, mercy, mercy.
I live as a monk in a neighborhood that people are afraid to drive through, let alone visit. I
like to think of myself as one of a long line of monks like Ryokan or Basho or Syncletica or Lao
Tsu or Antony, those eccentrics who took to the loneliness to meet their God.
Besides lacking a certain purity of soul that I so admire in these desert and mountain
recluses, I also live in the midst of an inner city. It is here, in a place that the late Trappist
monk Thomas Merton called the new wilderness, that I built my hut.
Merton thought it the new desert because the centers of our cities are barren and dry,
devoid of hope, of promise, of possibility. Demons dwell in the boarded-up houses, the dark
alleys, the abandoned storefronts, and they attack as soon as the sun sets. The demons come
with promises of nirvana in powder and capsules and sex, and they have their way, roaming the
streets at will.
As in all deserts, there is a starkness that attracts and appeals. There is no pretension here.
Everything is stripped bare. The homes have no fancy facades. No fresh paint. No new siding.
No screen doors. The windows have no curtains. There are no flowers, not even grass in most
yards, back or front. It is a visual of what John of the Cross called “the dark night of the soul.”
Everything down to bare necessity and no comfort in sight.
The people are naked, too. “I’m on drugs,” Miss Cynthia tells me after she finishes shoveling
my walk. Clifton beats his breast for years of alcohol and cocaine and a wasted life. Miss Ruby
weeps over her son. No bravado, no false fronts, no masks.
But in the “dark night” is great beauty and goodness, if you stay awake to it. I wonder at the
simple acts of goodness that I witness each day in circumstances where cactus, not orchids,
should grow.
Take my neighbor, Mr. Johnson, who struggles to raise a family of nine children. He has a bad
heart and gets by on part-time paving jobs, but just barely. One evening Mr. Johnson brought
out his grill and filled the summer air with barbecued ribs, chicken, and hot dogs. And he gave
them away free, along with potato salad, deviled eggs, and baked beans. He gave them away
free to dozens of children who flocked to his house and to every adult who lived on the block
or happened to be walking by.
Talk about taking the world into your arms. Here was a poor man giving of his sustenance.
Here was the widow’s mite enfleshed before my eyes. Here was Mr. Johnson, a reminder of a
God who gives freely, without measure, and with overflowing extravagance.
What do I do here? I play. I teach. I find myself wide-eyed with tenderness toward the
children. When I first moved back to my childhood home, there were thirty-four children living
on this one city block. Thirty-four children to play with, to read to, to treat with candy.
We started a self-help program called One Block at a Time. Thanks to small grants and
donations, the children could earn hand-printed dollars, only redeemable at a neighborhood
grocery store, if they participated in a daily cleanup of the block. And volunteers helped with a
summer reading program that culminated in a picnic and party at an indoor water park. We
spent two wonderful years together.
In the third year every child, except one, moved out. Thirty-three children left.
Why did they move? Well, it had something to do with my six-year-old neighbor being
molested by the little boys in the block.
It had something to do with seven abandoned houses in the block. That means abandoned
backyards with abandoned sheds where little boys take little girls to “hump” them.
It had something to do with gangs gathering in front of the abandoned houses to roll craps all
night long.
It had something to do with an eleven-year-old girl being raped in the corner crack house
and then forced to walk home half naked. “She was willin’,” the teenagers told the cops. “She
was willin’.”
Would you move if you were a mother with children? Is it hopeless? I refuse to surrender.
My refrigerator is covered with letters from the children. “Yuz is a life-saver,” one writes.
Another explains, “i be bad but that going to change.”
When my aunt Verna died, her funeral liturgy was in the neighborhood church. As we were
leaving the church behind the casket, I could see Jimanji standing on the sidewalk. When I saw
him, I had two thoughts: isn’t it nice that one of the neighborhood children came to see my
aunt being buried, and I hope this child doesn’t do or say something that will be interpreted as
disrespectful and open the racist bag. Then I exited the church and saw ten neighborhood
children, all standing quietly and respectfully, looking at me with great attention. I’d never
seen them so well behaved as a group. A few parishioners were doing some minor landscaping
and one of them, Bob, asked the children why they had gone to church. “We heard Miss
Kownacki’s aunt died, and we went to show our respect and honor.”
But mostly I hold on to Corey’s choice, I celebrated Corey’s birthday, as I did all the children’
s birthdays, by taking him to a book store and having him choose a book. Ten-year-old Corey
chose an illustrated version of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
He memorized a stanza, and he recites it every time he comes to my house for a visit:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Don’t talk to me about the death of hope.
No alarm awakens me at 5 a.m., just habit. In the dark I kiss my rosary and put it on the
nightstand. All is quiet. I sit. Only candlelight and an icon of the Black Madonna. “Mercy,
mercy, mercy,” I pray. Let the mercy of God rain down. Mercy on the corner bar. Mercy on
the crack house down the street. Mercy on the prostitute coming home with money to feed
her children. Mercy on the children sleeping through a winter storm, rags stuffed in their
bedroom windows. Mercy, mercy, mercy.
I live as a monk in a neighborhood that people are afraid to drive through, let alone visit. I
like to think of myself as one of a long line of monks like Ryokan or Basho or Syncletica or Lao
Tsu or Antony, those eccentrics who took to the loneliness to meet their God.
Besides lacking a certain purity of soul that I so admire in these desert and mountain
recluses, I also live in the midst of an inner city. It is here, in a place that the late Trappist
monk Thomas Merton called the new wilderness, that I built my hut.
Merton thought it the new desert because the centers of our cities are barren and dry,
devoid of hope, of promise, of possibility. Demons dwell in the boarded-up houses, the dark
alleys, the abandoned storefronts, and they attack as soon as the sun sets. The demons come
with promises of nirvana in powder and capsules and sex, and they have their way, roaming the
streets at will.
As in all deserts, there is a starkness that attracts and appeals. There is no pretension here.
Everything is stripped bare. The homes have no fancy facades. No fresh paint. No new siding.
No screen doors. The windows have no curtains. There are no flowers, not even grass in most
yards, back or front. It is a visual of what John of the Cross called “the dark night of the soul.”
Everything down to bare necessity and no comfort in sight.
The people are naked, too. “I’m on drugs,” Miss Cynthia tells me after she finishes shoveling
my walk. Clifton beats his breast for years of alcohol and cocaine and a wasted life. Miss Ruby
weeps over her son. No bravado, no false fronts, no masks.
But in the “dark night” is great beauty and goodness, if you stay awake to it. I wonder at the
simple acts of goodness that I witness each day in circumstances where cactus, not orchids,
should grow.
Take my neighbor, Mr. Johnson, who struggles to raise a family of nine children. He has a bad
heart and gets by on part-time paving jobs, but just barely. One evening Mr. Johnson brought
out his grill and filled the summer air with barbecued ribs, chicken, and hot dogs. And he gave
them away free, along with potato salad, deviled eggs, and baked beans. He gave them away
free to dozens of children who flocked to his house and to every adult who lived on the block
or happened to be walking by.
Talk about taking the world into your arms. Here was a poor man giving of his sustenance.
Here was the widow’s mite enfleshed before my eyes. Here was Mr. Johnson, a reminder of a
God who gives freely, without measure, and with overflowing extravagance.
What do I do here? I play. I teach. I find myself wide-eyed with tenderness toward the
children. When I first moved back to my childhood home, there were thirty-four children living
on this one city block. Thirty-four children to play with, to read to, to treat with candy.
We started a self-help program called One Block at a Time. Thanks to small grants and
donations, the children could earn hand-printed dollars, only redeemable at a neighborhood
grocery store, if they participated in a daily cleanup of the block. And volunteers helped with a
summer reading program that culminated in a picnic and party at an indoor water park. We
spent two wonderful years together.
In the third year every child, except one, moved out. Thirty-three children left.
Why did they move? Well, it had something to do with my six-year-old neighbor being
molested by the little boys in the block.
It had something to do with seven abandoned houses in the block. That means abandoned
backyards with abandoned sheds where little boys take little girls to “hump” them.
It had something to do with gangs gathering in front of the abandoned houses to roll craps all
night long.
It had something to do with an eleven-year-old girl being raped in the corner crack house
and then forced to walk home half naked. “She was willin’,” the teenagers told the cops. “She
was willin’.”
Would you move if you were a mother with children? Is it hopeless? I refuse to surrender.
My refrigerator is covered with letters from the children. “Yuz is a life-saver,” one writes.
Another explains, “i be bad but that going to change.”
When my aunt Verna died, her funeral liturgy was in the neighborhood church. As we were
leaving the church behind the casket, I could see Jimanji standing on the sidewalk. When I saw
him, I had two thoughts: isn’t it nice that one of the neighborhood children came to see my
aunt being buried, and I hope this child doesn’t do or say something that will be interpreted as
disrespectful and open the racist bag. Then I exited the church and saw ten neighborhood
children, all standing quietly and respectfully, looking at me with great attention. I’d never
seen them so well behaved as a group. A few parishioners were doing some minor landscaping
and one of them, Bob, asked the children why they had gone to church. “We heard Miss
Kownacki’s aunt died, and we went to show our respect and honor.”
But mostly I hold on to Corey’s choice, I celebrated Corey’s birthday, as I did all the children’
s birthdays, by taking him to a book store and having him choose a book. Ten-year-old Corey
chose an illustrated version of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
He memorized a stanza, and he recites it every time he comes to my house for a visit:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Don’t talk to me about the death of hope.
| |||||||||||
From A Monk in
the Inner City
by Mary Lou Kownacki
the Inner City
by Mary Lou Kownacki