Remember Fitz
LETTER FROM FITZ - 1995
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Robert Louis Stevenson remembered that, as a child, he would notice the town lamplighter firing up the street lanterns and call to his mother: "Look, Mum, it's the man who punches holes in the darkness!"
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January 5, 1996
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Dear Friends:
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Happy 12th Day of Christmas! Sorry there's no dozen drummers drumming enclosed. Apologies, as well, that this didn't arrive on an earlier day of the season. Age cures hams and wines, but has little effect on procrastination and writer's block.
As the days have begun getting longer and the nights shorter, I find myself thanking God for all the people who punch holes in the darkness.
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Two days before Christmas I had the joy of helping a 73 year old man move from the Berkeley city shelter into his own apartment. On the way we stopped at the Bank of America to cash a check for his rent. Peter had been wearing the same clothes for many days and was suffering that day from "the runs". He was taking a long time to produce the requested I.D., when the young, smug, preppie bank teller (trying to stifle his distaste at Peter's sight and smell) asked, condescendingly: "Are you sure you have an account here?" With his dignity under assault, Peter's feebleness vanished. He swelled with outraged self-esteem and thundered: "Young man, I have had an account here long before you-were born!" I was so proud for him! And I remembered the words that Luke remembered Mary, pregnant with Jesus, saying in her Magnificat: "He has shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit; he has cast down
the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly."
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Two days after Christmas it was cold and rainy here and the folks waiting for the evening meal in the hallway at the·
Food Project, were definitely "on edge", with a bad, collective case of the post-holiday blues. Victor, a sweet and vulnerable young homeless man, who never goes anywhere without his guitar, didn't have the 25¢ we charge for the "Quarter Meal", and
asked if he could trade a song ("any Beatles song") for supper. Moments later the whole crowd were smiling, clapping and singing: "We all live in a yellow submarine!" I choose to believe that it was at least as heavenly a chorus as the one those Bethlehem
shepherds heard so many years ago.
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FYI, I left the job at Tower Records at the end of summer and began working with some wonderful colleagues at an agency that serves the homeless in Berkeley. (Unfortunately many of us are in the process of resigning from the agency, for various ethical reasons.)
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For all of you, who continue with your own gifts to punch holes in the darkness, I thank God, and remember Herman Hesse's words from NARCISSUS AND GOLDMUND:
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It is thanks to you that my heart has not dried up, that a place within me has remained open to grace.
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With love.
-Fitz​​​