Dear Fr. Dan,
Your friendship has been a wonderful gift. Think back on those Loyola days in N.O., LA and then fast forward through time like a movie; your life, my life, unfolding, as we intersect from time to time. And our friendship is the steady template that connects us like a thread. Space and time wither in the ever-present origin of our sharing bond.
I miss connecting with you. And I miss my other priest friend too, Fr. Andrew J. Cassin, who wouldn't let me serve as altar boy because my shoes weren't shined. As we were set to go out on the altar, in the sacristy, he looked down at my shoes and sent me away. It was those shoes, always those shoes, that took me down the shabby road of my scruffy life; those highway shoes, whose muddy shoes? My muddy, old shoes that walked the line, that took me so far away from myself, from my larger Self.
In high school at Gonzaga, Fr. William P. Sampson, S.J. believed in me just enough to help me to believe in myself as a writer. Brusque and smiley, Bill Sampson also took this hippy-in-formation, this wayward Soldier of Christ, molding-me-without-molding-me in his detached yet strong and subtle way.
I kept wandering in those shoes for over 45 years, often forgetting to polish them, just as I rarely washed my car. Yes, his admonition would become the metaphor for my wandering, a squandered life in the wilderness of separation from the goodness of the heavenly Father and from our blessed Mother.
Funny, I've been trying to polish my shoes ever since. And now that I have returned to the proper House from whence I came, back to the place wherein I began my desolate misadventures, you and these other two padre friends have now vanished—as has Fr. Ben Garrett, the non-Catholic convert-turned-priest/U.S. Navy Chaplain, who appeared at just the right moment to help me bury my WWII Navy veteran father, and then my sister.
And the work of an ex-padre has now intersected my life to help me shine those shoes: Douglas Gabriel. He tells me of Novalis:
And if we live countless lives, as did the old soul (known in the 18th Century as "Novalis"), then how many more stops on the caravanserai are left as we journey onward, upward, toward Oneness-of-being with our dear Creator? I wonder. I Google caravanserai and click on "Images" and it turns me into a Homesick James.
Take care, Fr. Daniel Lackie, O.F.M., wherever you may be!
Your friend,
Jack aka Wyman aka Stubby aka Bro. Jack Gumpus, O.4B.
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