Remember Fitz

LETTER FROM FITZ - 1968

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But hear me when I call to you softly 

through the flutes and chimes,

Listen when I ask gently but hopefully 

that you remember,

Remember,

that the child,

the baby with the halo 

who lies in the yellow hay in all the 

rich heavy paintings

Sleeping calmly in the presence of jeweled and bewildered royalty

Grew into a young man who lived a strange 

and glorious life

Who said once

(in that time forgotten, that faded time between the cradle and the cross)

"All men are brothers"

and another time

"Thou shall not kill"

And he knew that he would not, 

could not,

for any reason,

kill his brother.

 

--Joan Baez

Christmas, 1966

 

 

Hi! 

 

That time again…lots of remembering to do this year…

Much of it sad (April 4, June 6, Chicago August, and other assorted dates). 

For us optimists thought I guess hope will always spring more or less eternal.

 

April 12 is a hopeful date I look forward to. A beginning day, when years of preparation for the priesthood ends and the real things starts.

 

News? Well, a new address, as you’ve noticed by now…and a new twofold focus; as grad student in education at Notre Dame and as teacher of religion at nearby St. Joe High. (And, distressingly, two or three gray hairs near the temple the last time I looked – and I’m not even thirty yet!!!)

 

For Christmas, and for 1969, I wish you happiness, inspiration to see the beauty in everyday things, but, as the song goes, “most of all, I wish you love.”

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