Remember Fitz
LETTER FROM FITZ - 1992
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That life was the light of the world.
And that light still shines in the darkness
and the darkness has never managed to put it out!
-- St. John (John's Gospel, ch.1)
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Hard to see the light now.
Just don't let it go!
Things will work out right now.
Ask me how I know.
-- Stephen Sondheim (Into The Woods)
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Will the future ever arrive? ... Should we continue to look upwards?
Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished:
The ideal is terrifying to behold, lost as it is in the depths, small, isolated, a pin-point, brilliant
but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it;
nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in
the jaws of the clouds.
-- Victor Hugo
(Les Miserables)
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4th Sunday of Advent
12-20-92
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Dear Friends:
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As we head into the shortest day and longest night of the year, I send you wise words of hope and trust from a 1st century Jew, from a 19th century French man and from a theatrical visionary of our own day. All have been a source of encouragement and inspiration for me over the years, but never more so than this past year.
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While I hadn't planned on being a student again, 1992 ended up providing a crash course in broken-ness and vulnerability and brought me eyeball-to-eyeball with my own limitations, and with the darkness and treachery that still reside in the human heart, waiting to be scattered by healing light and redeeming grace. Having had a glimpse of the abyss, I cling with renewed devotion to what Lennon & McCartney celebrated as "mother Mary's words of wisdom " ("And in my hour of darkness there is still a light that shines on me -- shine until tomorrow:
'Let it be!'")
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In October I moved to Portland, Oregon, where I live with the Holy Cross community, just off the campus of the University of Portland. I am working at the Downtown Chapel with some wonderful women and men who are devoted to the needs of the homeless poor. It is a relief to not be in charge of the enterprise(for a change) and it's a real adjustment to be going home from work to my own apartment at the end of the day (for the first time in my life!) This is a lovely city, famous for roses and coffee, among other things. And the "light of the world" shines here too, even on the shortest day of the year, in the hearts of many good people, just as it does in Chicago, South Bend, Phoenix, Berkeley.
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Please know that, even though my correspondence has been almost non-existent this year, you are very much in my heart. As the
itinerant rabbi from Nazareth, whose birth we are celebrating, reminded us: "YOU ARE THE SALT OF THE EARTH! YOU ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD!"
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May the new year bring you only light and love!
-Fitz