"You Can't Do That!"

My daughter Mia wanted to do something with me for my birthday and so I asked if she’d go with me to a talk at the Unity Church. Marv Davidov and Carol Masters were going to be speaking on nonviolent activism. I wanted to hear them, and besides, it gave me a chance to check out the site of my talk on A Course of Love next Wednesday. (Unity Church - Unitarian, 732 Holly Avenue, St. Paul. 7:00)

Earlier in the day there’d been the chance of taking my mother and mother-in-law to church for Ash Wednesday services. We’d thought we might go at noon but it didn’t work out that way, and when Mia called about the evening, I said, “I think I’m taking Mom to church for ashes at 5:00, then getting a fish sandwich.” Mia wanted to go to church too, so the plan was formed. Later I learned that my mom had gone along to the noon service with her neighbor, Grace.

Maybe because I wasn’t thinking so much of Lent as I was of the evening ahead, the Mass didn’t seem like such a solemn affair, or maybe it was the whole talk of ashes reminding us of our fragility, the fragility of human life. Where some years this reminder has come almost as startling news, that wasn’t the case this year. I’m aware. And so the whole idea of Jesus leading us through death to new life was welcome.

I had a few friends I hadn’t seen in a while sitting across the aisle, but Mia and I rushed out as the final song was sung, before so many of the other parishioners that Father was standing alone to shake our hands. “Good morning, I mean good afternoon,” he said to Mia. I took his hand and said, “Good evening, Father” and we all chuckled softly. By then it was dark and as we exited Mia said, “Are you sure you want to do this? We’ll be so rushed. Why do you want to?”

So I gave her my reasons – that my mom and I had planned to see each other earlier in the day, and I’d missed seeing her over the weekend, and when her plans changed I’d said I’d stop by with fish.

Driving up Robert Street, the main fast food thorough fare on our side of town, I tell Mia that we’ll stop at Culvers and I had her call my mom to tell her we were on our way. (My own cell phone fell out of my pocket and into the toilet last night, and although it seemed to keep working after drying out, had now gone dark.)

“Oh, don’t bring me anything,” Mom said. “I went to Culvers for lunch and I’m still full.”

So we get our fish and stop at Mom’s to eat it, where I use the bathroom, and she gives me a checkbox full of lipsticks that she doesn’t like, a large bag of plastic store bags (since we’re always running out at home, what with cat litter and diapers), a birthday present, and a Pepsi to go with the fish that Mia and I snarf up in our 15 minutes before needing to be on the road again.

Fifteen minutes after that we’re driving on the roughly plowed streets of an inner city neighborhood, looking for our address in the dark, fairly confident of being able to find a church. Five minutes later we’re seated with about 40 others, listening to a sincere woman and a humorous man recount their lives as activists: she since the 80’s and he since the 50’s.

I hadn’t even known they had a book, written together as she interviewed him (even after a long-time friendship) while he had dialysis, and researched over five years to put his story in context along with hers and ours.

The book is called, “You Can’t Do That!” and neither the Minneapolis or St. Paul newspapers – who’d covered so many of Marv’s exploits, had yet to review it. (Don’t I know how that goes.)

At the end of the talk, Marv was asked how he kept from getting discouraged. He paused and gestured and ran his fingers through the sides of his hair that stuck out of his hat, and said, “You get discouraged. You get blue. This stuff takes time.” And then he quoted someone who once said to him, “It doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work, and then it works.”

Coming home Mia and I talked of a few of the historical places and names she didn’t know, and I drove down our well-plowed suburban street and dropped her off by her car, parked on the street near the mail box. She’d bought me Carol and Marv’s book for my birthday. I’d had it signed. We’d thanked them, and I thanked her.

Then I came in, took off my coat, flipped through the book, and looked up and saw myself in the mirror: forehead smudged darkly and boldly with an ashen cross.