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and they pass the stores and look at the displays and
don t forget this: so do the priests. The bells are there,
but there s a lot of other noise in the air, voices with
messages about buying and selling: spend and get and
work hard, so you can spend more, get more, and hey,
that s the life.
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 This is a here-and-now world, that s what I mean
when I say  secular ; and the religious side of it, even the
moral side of it well, there s a lot up for grabs. You
want an example of what I mean? [I had appeared per-
plexed, even overwhelmed by the sweeping nature of his
remarks, and wasn t sure what to say, or ask, in response
to them.] A grandmother, a young one, who was born
in Italy and came here when she was fifteen, and mar-
ried and brought up a family, and now is helping her
daughter bring up another one, told me a few weeks ago
that it s become different going to church here than it
was when she was in Italy and when she first came here.
She used to sit there and talk to God, and try to figure
out what He wanted, and try to please Him. Now, she
says, she mostly thinks about what s going on in her
life, in her kids lives, and she asks God to make it bet-
ter. You know what? She got herself so damn close to
being as smart as the big-shot social critics and philoso-
phers she said to me:  It used to be I prayed to God,
that I would learn what He wanted from me, and how
He wanted me to behave (I wanted His help to be that
kind of person, the kind He wanted); but now I pray to
God that He help us with this problem, and the next
one to be a Big Pal of ours! It used to be, when I
prayed to God, I was talking to Him; now, it s me talk-
ing to myself, and I m only asking Him to help out
with things. 
A long silence, as he caught his breath and watched
me as I tried to figure out, in mid-twentieth-century
America, at the age of twenty-seven, where we were
headed in this  interview. He must have noticed that I
needed some summing up, a more conceptual or analyt-
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CHAPTER III
ical posture on his part, as opposed to that of the story-
teller, the narrator who  merely describes what he has
seen or heard, in the hope that his listener will get the
point, use it in whatever way he or she likes (including
as grist for the spinning of theory). Finally, I hear this:
 You see, in a secular world, you think of yourself, your
family, and friends; you pray for yourself, your family,
and friends. I don t mean that you re not being truly
religious that way I guess I m just trying to let you
know what parents have been letting me know, that
there s a shift going on, there s been a shift, and they
can sense it, and they re as smart as you and me and
some college professor in sociology or theology, who s
trying to tell his class what s happening in our country.
We ve gone whole hog for  the things of this world,
and that [attitude] is what a secular life is all about, and
it s part of a person s religious life, too.
I now wanted to hurry us both back to his poetry,
where I felt much more at home than I had been with
the direction our conversation had taken. I made refer-
ence to his poem  The Catholic Bells, its ringing af-
firmation of a summoning institutional presence among
modest, decent people going through the rhythms of
their everyday lives. Yes, he appreciated my mention of
that particular poem; it had given him much pleasure
to write it, and he certainly was acknowledging the au-
thority, both joyous and grave, of a powerful religion in
the affairs of those he had known so long as a home-
visiting physician (in the phrase then used, a  general
practitioner ). But, I was reminded, he said at the start
of the poem that he was an outside observer ( Tho
I m no Catholic I listen hard when the bells / in the
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WHERE WE STAND: 2000
yellow-brick tower / of their new church / ring down
the leaves / ring in the frost upon them / and the death
of the flowers . . .  ); and he was at immediate pains to
mention a  new church, and to connect this church to
nature s events, which, of course, would include our
human experiences:
. . . the new baby of Mr. and Mrs.
Krantz which cannot
for the fat of its cheeks
open well its eyes, ring out
the parrot under its hood
jealous of the child
ring in Sunday morning
and old age which adds as it
takes away. . . .
Moreover, he reminds me, those Catholic bells are ring-
ing, the poet insists, for
the children of my friend
who no longer hears
them ring but with a smile [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]