Monastic retreat: arriving

The truths of Buddhism are living truths and they cannot be handed to us by anyone. They must be discovered and experiences by each and every one of us.

Master Hsing Yun
Buddhism, Pure and Simple

It was the kind of summer day that burns out power grids when I walked through the entrance shrine with its five enlightened beings and back out into the sunny courtyard of the Hsi Lai ("shee lai") Temple and monastery in Hacienda Heights for the Eight Precept Retreat, eight days, seven nights. We were were supposed to bring nothing but a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, some underwear, white socks, and a sleeping bag. The form also said we’d need to bring, or buy from the temple, brown lo hans which are cloth, semi-open shoes. Nothing else was allowed.

So, with a small knapsack and sleeping bag in hand, I followed signs around the central courtyard and up the carpeted marble stairs to the registration room where I got a name badge with both English and Chinese characters on it. I was also given a thick manila envelope filled with a few booklets, a pen, a pad of paper, and a schedule for the week. Every moment from 5:20 in the morning until 10:20 at night was accounted for. Good, I thought, at least I won’t have the problem I’d had in Olema where, aside from making my meals, there was nothing running interference between me and my so-called “monkey mind.” In Olema, I’d felt like I was constantly policing a band of small children in my head.

I went to another table where I was given the clothes I was to wear for the rest of the week: two knee-length, slate gray tunics with matching pants that looked like raw silk but were made out of a heavy, manmade material. A robed nun put a folded dark brown cloth in a plastic bag on top of the rest. Then a woman behind a table directed me to still another table where a nun asked if I wanted to make a donation for food. They’d only asked for eighty dollars for the full seven nights of room and board so I gave sixty more. It didn’t feel like quite enough but I’d emptied my pockets before I got out of the car so it was all I had. I was then sent to still another table in the back for a translation device.

Yes, a translation device. A United Nations-like earpiece wired to a receiver I could clip onto a belt – if the gray outfit had a belt.

I hadn’t really focused on the part of the application where they asked what language we spoke. And I admit I ignored the moment in the interview where the cheerful nun had said, almost in passing, “You know you might not understand everything – we do a pretty good job of translating but still there may be some things you’ll miss. Don’t get upset. Just go inside (yourself). Notice what it brings up in you.”

She really meant it: the entire retreat was going to be in Chinese. Mandarin, to be specific.

Of the 207 or so people who came to the retreat, no more than a couple dozen of us spoke English. I turned out to be one of perhaps ten non-Asian people there. That meant I had to learn how to use and wear one of that translation device every waking moment and figure out how to keep it in my uniform’s pockets, battery functional, wire to my ear, while learning how to bow, kneel, take on and off various robes and other ceremonial items and take it on and off to go into the bathroom, all without accidentally dumping it or the earpiece on the ground. It also meant that someone from the temple had to be translating absolutely everything that was said from 5:20am when we got up until we went to our rooms around ten each night. Just think of the logistics and effort that required from the temple staff…kind of amazing.

Once my arms were full with papers and stacks of clothing and devices and my knapsack and sleeping bag, I followed a nun up a steep hill behind the monastery along with a young blue-haired girl who was wearing the most amazing amount of make-up. It was quite a contrast walking behind these two: the compact, shorn, Buddhist nun wearing heavy robes in the desperate heat followed by this brightly colored, barely-dressed girl wearing nothing more than a magenta bra under a cobalt blue sun dress as she struggled up the hill in her platform sandals.

Oh, and did I mention I was in the midst of the worst menopausal hot flashes of my life? Wave after wave of raw burning rose up from my ribs, tearing up over the sides of my neck and face with a heat no amount of sweat could cool. One swept over me as we topped the hill and walked into a building that said “Buddha's Light Publishing.”

One by one, the six other women meant to share the one bathroom flanked by two small rooms arrived. Other than the minimal conversation required to sort out which two drawers were whose, and an exchange of names, there were no real introductions. We were not supposed to talk in our rooms or, really, anywhere, for the full eight days and seven nights except for a couple of special sessions mid-week. So, with my roommates, I had little to go on but external appearances. All I knew was the bed next to mine was assigned to a white, middle-aged woman with fairly long semi-dyed blond hair who was an active Buddhist from Toronto. When she asked the nun a question, she called her “Sifu ” which I found out later meant "Teacher." The bed on the other side of her was taken by a heavy-set Indian woman with glasses who marched into the room and chose her two drawers before anyone had a chance to think about it. Perpendicular to us, was the final bed in my room which was taken by a tall, middle-aged Chinese-American woman who was our group leader. A woman from Miami and a teacher from Torrance shared the other room with Blue.

The nun took Blue Girl’s and my remaining valuables - cell phones, car keys, any jewelry – and sealed them carefully in separate envelops for safekeeping. I finally got a close look at the nun’s name tag: Venerable Miao Hsi. When she wasn’t our mother duck, she ran Buddha's Light Publishing. And, we learned later, she’s fully ordained like all the nuns in this brand of Buddhism. There’s no difference between the monks and nuns in terms of the rituals they can perform.

Once we were all there, Venerable Miao Hsi ran through the rules for the week in a kind but clipped manner: “Put your tooth brush, tooth paste, soap, cup and shampoo in this basin.” she said, holding a round plastic bowl. “Everything else you brought, including any make-up, any clothes other than the underwear you need, put those away. Your second set of clothes and the robe,” she held up one of the brown folded cloths wrapped in plastic, “should be carefully folded and on the shelf whenever you aren’t wearing it. And you won’t be wearing the robe until tomorrow night.” She then moved to the side of the bed I’d been assigned to demonstrate. “When you get up in the morning, here’s how you leave your bed: you take your blanket or sleeping bag and fold it first lengthwise in three and then you fold it again: one end into the center and then the other end on top to make a perfect square. Everything’s in threes. It should then be placed with the pillow on top at the head of your bed and look very neat.”

We then awkwardly followed her into the small hall outside the bathroom. A large clothes drying rack stood in one corner. “Your towel must be folded on this rack in the same order as your beds. Number one (that was me) goes here,” she said, placing her hand on a rung, “Followed by two, three, four. The other room, you go down here. When you fold your towels, the edges must be together, neat. The open side, the side with the edges, faces to the left, just like this. Every towel the same.” Venerable Hsi then took one of the small hand towels – the only towel we got, the only towel we were allowed – to demonstrate the required degree of perfection. “There will be room inspections every day so it’s important that everything be in place.

I panicked. All I could think was, how am I going to remember all of this? And what does this have to do with religion?

Let me say, straight out, I never put things down in the same place twice. I am the key-losing sort. I like to think it’s because I am too focused on the people in my life and the things I’m thinking about to worry about such mundane and routine things as order but the truth is, I’m a slob. A recovering slob, the way you have to be if you’re a mother or someone in charge of a workplace, but I’m the sort that comes up with reasons why unmade beds are actually good. (“Airs out the sheets.” “You’re going to just mess them up when you get in them later.” “It feels homey.” Etc.) But now I’m going to have to use just one single tiny hand towel all week and remember to fold it so carefully that all the edges match perfectly and that the opening is on the left not the right side every time I hang it up?!?!??! And they were going to inspect and critique whether or not I'd folded my slippery sleeping bag into thirds lengthwise and then again horizontally into a perfect square that could stay neat all day and whether or not my toothbrush was lined up perfectly parallel to my toothpaste and soap? This was a non-detail-person’s nightmare. I mean, I actually like chucking each section of my newspaper across the room in the direction of the wastebasket when I'm done reading it in bed. Kevin doesn't like it and I have no idea why I like doing that except it makes me feel all swashbuckly. And I have no idea how my shoes end up right in the middle of the room where people walk but they always do. Kevin claims I'm secretly out to get him. I'm not. Really. I swear. At least, I don't think I am.

Ven. Miao Hsi continued. “This is part of your mindfulness training, to keep track of your mind. There is no talking at any time but you may always come ask me any questions you have or with any problems you have.”

I admit I watched Blue Girl more than the nun during the demonstration and I couldn’t help but have sympathy. “No way” was practically screaming out of her head, probably with at least one expletive between the two words. A decade ago that would have been me, full of bristle and rage, caught up in a mental argument with what felt like rigid arbitrary rules. When I saw her reacting, I realized that something had changed in me. Maybe it’s my age or maybe it’s my determination to know something I don’t know but, while I did feel overwhelmed, sure I’d never remember everything I was supposed to do, I still felt willing to see what following these directions might mean to me. Plus, I reminded myself, I can do anything for a week. Well, almost anything.

But Blue Girl couldn’t. Long before sunset, long before dinner, her mother came back to pick her up and she was gone.

Now, what I’m about to describe may seem extreme – and it was – but it’s meant to give people of all sorts a direct experience of what life is like for a monk or nun-in-training in this sect of Chinese Buddhism. While there were a few people in attendance who were actively considering whether or not they might want to become a monk or nun, most who signed up for this retreat were simply practicing Buddhists. This intensive session is something this sect encourages people to do at least once in their lifetime. It was meant to be tough. Just how hard core? All the men -- even the fourteen year-old boy -- had to shave their heads.

There were a few people there for other reasons like me. One of my suitemates turned out to be a world religions teacher in a local public high school. But I feel the need to warn you: what I’m about to describe is not the everyday practice of Buddhism; it’s the daily practice of a monk-in-training for this particular branch of Buddhism which is a Chinese order blending many different strands of Buddhism including Pure Land Buddhism with elements of Ch’an (known more commonly in the United States as Zen.) This branch of Buddhism is among the largest Buddhist denominations in the world, that is, everywhere but here in this country where pure Zen Buddhism is much more widely known and practiced.

Pure Land is sometimes described as the branch of Buddhism closest to Christianity in that it says that “liberation” from suffering – the goal of Buddhism – can be reached through the grace and intervention of a higher being and that chanting the Amitabha Buddha’s name can help call on that grace. Most Buddhist sects don’t get into the issue of God or any notion of divine being at all; most sects do not consider Buddha to be a divine figure like God. It’s not a matter of whether they do or don’t believe in God or a god; Buddhism’s focus seems much more pragmatic than that. The Four Noble Truths, the essential core revelations of the historical Buddha – a Hindu prince named Siddartha Gautama – are simply these:

Dukkha: All worldly life is unsatisfactory, disjointed, suffering.
Samudaya: There is a cause of suffering, which is attachment or desire (tanha).
Nirodha: There is a way out of suffering, which is to eliminate attachment and desire.
Marga: The path that leads out of suffering is called the Noble Eightfold Path.

So what all sects of Buddhism share is a focus, primarily, on the pragmatic alleviation of suffering. There are two main branches of Buddhism (Theravada & Mahayana) and they’re split along a simple idea: what's most important, your salvation or the salvation of others? The Hsi Lai temple is part of the Mahayana branch, the branch that focuses on the salvation of others first and this retreat was designed to help us learn how to reduce our suffering. But first I guess we had to learn all the ways we suffer and why.

The “Eight Precepts” we were supposed to follow during the retreat were 1) no killing, 2) no stealing, 3) celibacy, 4) no lying, 5) no use of intoxicants, 6) no eating after noon, 7) no use of decorations, dancing, or watching entertainments and 8) no sleeping on comfortable beds or sitting on comfortable chairs. The first five precepts are supposed to be followed by every Buddhist except the third, for lay people, isn’t celibacy but to refrain from sexual misconduct.

Okay, so following the precepts was the big picture. The devil was in the details. Our most basic actions were broken down into rules. And it didn’t stop with towel folding.

Once we’d given up all of our belongings and gotten into our grey tunics and pants, brown lohans and white socks, head shaved if we were men, hair pulled back tight if we were women, we went to the auditorium to get the rest of our rules of conduct in the auditorium from a frightening six-foot tall Chinese nun who was called, just for the retreat, the Discipline Master.

This woman could give Roald Dahl's Mrs Trunchball a scare. Her eyebrows were black, her shoulders were broad, her glare was a weapon. “Sit up! Don’t be lazy, leaning back on your chairs!” She barked harsh Chinese syllables into a wireless microphone close to her scowling mouth. A beat or two later, a sweet voice translated her barks into my ear. “This is not respectful. You must cultivate a respectful posture. Don’t bend your body even if no one reminds you. You must cultivate this so it will be part of your life.”

She was imposing, her fierceness mesmerizing. A few syllables later, the sweet voice in my ear said, "What are you looking at?”

What are you looking at? It took me a moment but I suddenly realized, in this room of over two hundred people, she meant me, she was talking, no, yelling at me, me and a few others. I thought I must be hearing something wrong. Looking? There's a problem with looking? Isn't it respectful to look at someone when they speak to you? Disrespectful not to? I "look", like, all the time. I’m dependent on looking. I learn by looking. I support what I hear by reading lips and body language. I've even made a living my entire life by being a careful looker; after all, isn’t that what reporters are? Professional lookers? How am I going to be able to know what’s going on without being able to look at anything, especially when they’re speaking Mandarin? I mean, I wouldn't have known I was one of the people she was speaking to if I hadn't been “looking.”

But, then, she wouldn't have been speaking to me.

Okay. No looking.

I had no idea how I was going to pull that off or why she thought it was so important but the muscular nun was pretty riled up about it. "You're about to become monastics and still you look around? Where is your mind? You only have seven days here! Are you going to waste your time looking at others?"

But no looking was just the beginning. The scary nun, along with about a dozen other women in robes, told us how to sit – with our back straight, not against a chair back ever, eyes down; how to stand – feet only slightly apart, toes turned slightly out, right hand resting in the palm of the left at the waist making the bottom of a comfortable triangle with your head as the apex, eyes down; how to walk – mindfully, quietly, in straight line in order of tallest to smallest without looking around at anything or anyone; and even how to sleep – on your right side, somewhat curved, with one hand under your head. We were supposed to “Stand like an oak, walk like a breeze, sit like a bell, sleep like a bowl.” (If we had been actual monastics in training, there would have been someone coming in at night to make sure we were, indeed, sleeping like a bowl.) And, whenever anyone of the monastics addressed us by saying “Preceptees” in Mandarin, we were to answer “Ah-mi-tuo-fo.” It took me two days to actually understand the syllables we were supposed to say loudly and why. It’s the Amitabha Buddha’s name in Pali.

In our dorm, that first afternoon, Sifu (Ven Miao Hsi) said, "When you’re dressed and your rooms are in order, line up outside. We’re going to dinner.”

Although the shadows cast by the buildings were growing, we were having a record-breaking heat wave and the heat was still intense. Those of us who were ready first stood waiting, looking at nothing, until everyone was in their proper place in line with the back of our right hands resting on the palm of our left. Our grey outfits were buttoned all the way up to the neck, our translation devices were in our pockets with a wire up to our ear pieces and, with our hands held just so, we walked single file in silence, back down the hill to the dining hall. Our schedule said it was time to learn Buddhist meal etiquette.




7 July 2007


A class led by Master Hsing Yun on the Heart Sutra (YouTube) it isn't in English but it has voice-over translation

86 hours of silence

Can a man get pearls by floating or swimming on the surface? He must dive deep.

Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Ramakrishna

Silence and withdrawing for a period of time are an important part of Hinduism but I am one of the loudest, least solitary people I know. Don't get me wrong: I actually like being alone, at least, I think I do, but most of my working life I've spent in television news and, aside from a couple of years in my twenties, I've never lived completely alone. And the house I grew up in was loud: had three querulous brothers and we lived in a neighborhood filled with guys who never seemed to stop yelling, laughing or teasing. Now I live in a house with two boys and a husband, none of whom could be described as quiet. But I have liked being alone. The very first few words I put together on this project came when a girlfriend backed out of a cross-country skiing trip we were supposed to take together and, instead of canceling, I went alone. So, I figured it was time to see what a few days in the Vedanta Society's retreat house might be like.

With a letter from Swami Sarvadevananda, I got permission to go to the retreat center in Olema at the very end of January for four nights. It seemed like a good time to go, given that Luke’s and Matt’s finals were over and Kevin had just finished a project making that week a light one for him. Four nights meant I was going to have to keep my mouth shut from Tuesday dinner through Saturday at dawn. But it wasn’t just no talking: the rules of the center said no cell phone or computers either.

The retreat center confirmation also said to bring towels, linen, and all of my own food, that the kitchen was well-stocked with utensils and plates but “retreatants” were on our own for just about everything, including cleaning. So, on Tuesday morning, I dropped Luke and Matt off at school and drove six hours north through farmland and alongside the state’s endless aqueducts to Olema.

To get to the Vedanta women’s retreat center, you have turn onto a dirt road just outside the intersection that is Olema and follow it past the farmhouse that serves as the men’s retreat center, then through uncertainly fenced fields with muscular black cattle chewing in them. At the very end of the rutted road was a fairly new building built expressly for its purpose.

The kitchen was, indeed, well-stocked and cleaner than almost any kitchen I had ever seen. The open dining and living room had polished wooden tables, couches and armchairs and opened onto a wooden deck with a view of pastures bordered by trees. There were eight bedrooms off two short corridors, each opening directly to outside and a carpeted meditation room, Just off the kitchen, there was a small room for the caretaker – it was Noelle while I was there - who gave me keys to front door and as well as a “silence bead” to let the other women know that, even in the few hours we were allowed to talk (around dinner time), that I would be silent.

Not talking for eight-six hours is a lot easier if you’re in a beautiful place without cell phone service or internet or anyone you know. I brought nothing in with me except the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna,

the puja kit Hemu had encouraged me to buy, the small handbook Swami Sarvadevananda had suggested – Worship of Sri Ramakrisha - and a journal, although I was determined not even to write in that. And I kept my meals simple: nuts, yogurt, some spinach salad, fruit, nothing that required major preparation.

Not talking wasn’t so bad; not doing was my problem. Watching the day flow by from a bench on a hill instead of being immersed in it was hard. I do so I don’t feel. I do to convince myself there is a point. I do to distract from the fact that doing isn’t the point but I have no idea what is. Days directed by sunlight, wrist stripped of its handcuff of time, were long, deliciously long when you stopped fighting them. When the to-do lists and the doubts came, I simply watched the storm clouds gather, the mental winds whip around and then pass. Thoreau and his sunlight kept coming to mind as I sat overlooking the valley, measuring time by the shadow’s spread from one tree trunk to another, by the layers of clothing needed to stay warm, by the herd of exotic deer’s slow climb from the valley into the hills just after dawn. The deer’s ancestors were left behind more than fifty years ago by men who planned to hunt them but now they overrun the place.

Comic relief: the first two mornings my wake up call was a gang of wild turkeys gobbling and complaining just outside my window as they scuttled across the grass at first light.

I tried to use the puja kit but its complexity, even with plenty of free time, even with the help of the step-by-step instructions in the Worship of Sri Ramakrishna, stumped me again although there was one revelation: in the directions for the daily ritual, devotees are directed to dip their fingers into purified water and then to draw a triangle inside a circle and then a square around both on the ground.

Sound familiar? It did to me. At home, I googled: “Alcoholics Anonymous symbol” and saw, on an AA-related website, the very same image (minus a square around the outside) and the following statement quoted from AA literature: “That we have chosen this particular symbol is perhaps no accident. The priests and seers of antiquity regarded the circle enclosing the triangle as a means of warding off spirits of evil, and A.A.'s circle and triangle of Recovery, Unity, and Service has certainly meant all of that to us and much more." I had forgotten, until seeing this image, Swami Sarvadevananda’s telling me that the founder of AA, Bill Wilson, had been a devotee of this particular form of Hinduism, at least for a while.

But most of the time, when I wasn’t wandering the grounds or trying to meditate, either inside the meditation room or outside on the bench on the hill, I read the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.

He sure was tough company. The Gospel is really more of a biography or journal written by one of Ramakrishna’s devotees under a single initial: “M.” What’s interesting about it is the degree to which “M” simply took notes rather than making a concerted effort to mythologize the man he came to believe was an actual incarnation of the Divine. It has a warts-and-all feel, a very human picture which, for me, made it all the more difficult to consider the idea that this man could be a “capital I” Incarnation. I mean, this was a man who shamelessly guilted some of his married followers into living away from their wives and children for months at a time; who was unschooled, perhaps close to illiterate, and who spent the first years of his adult life weeping at the feet of Kali, sometimes without clothes on, demanding that God actually appear before him, live and in person.

Who can measure up to that standard? Do I want to literally see God, if such a thing were possible? Sure, I’m driven to do whatever it is I am doing – I sometimes feel like a carcass and an intellect being dragged along by this drive of mine – but to weep for it? To stand naked in a temple and demand a Visit? To threaten to kill myself if God didn’t seem interested in complying? It isn’t just that my passion isn’t strong enough to follow Ramakrishna’s example, to disregard all inbred societal norms. If I’m very honest, I’m not so sure I would choose to see God even if I believed such a thing were possible.

In the Bhagavad Gita, the terrifying passage where God finally revealed just part of Itself to Arjuna, made me not so certain any of us really would choose to see the Divine if we could. That awe-filled description takes my breath away. I was clear on this point: at that moment I felt wholly incapable of even imagining myself ever having the courage required to have that kind of desire, that absolute and laser-beam faith. Alone, for days of silence with Ramakrishna, the mountain of faith felt too sheer, too high to climb, without better spiritual equipment than I had.

Perhaps it’s enough, in any given moment, to act on faith “indifferent to results, content with whatever happens.” Or take the actions of a faithful person just to find out something I might not learn otherwise.

When reading Ramakrishna got too much, I wandered around the woods, following overgrown paths wherever they led. At one point, so many branches had fallen, the path was impossible to follow. Clearing the ones I could move, I wondered if it was possible my purpose might be just that, to clear those branches on that particular day so that some modern day Ramakrishna might be able to find his or her way to their bodhi tree, to their epiphanous spot, and it was just my job to move those branches without ever knowing the effect. Could that be enough? Would it matter if it wasn’t?

By the time Saturday morning came, I was packed up in my ice-coated car, waiting for the caretaker down at the men’s retreat center to open the gate at seven in the morning, the moon still high in the early morning sky. I was going to meet Huston Smith. When I got to an area where my cell phone had reception, I was relieved to find no message canceling our visit.

"I don't want to have to rescue you..."

It never crossed my mind that what I’m doing might affect my family…maybe even scare them a bit....

At the beginning the aspirant should go into solitude now and then. Spiritual discipline is necessary. You want to eat rice; suppose you sit down somewhere and say, ‘Wood contains fire and fire cooks rice.’ Can saying it cook the rice? You must get two pieces of wood and by rubbing them together bring out the fire.

Sri Ramakrishna
The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna

I'd decided to go to the Vedanta Society’s retreat center in Olema, California, near Point Reyes National Seashore. It required a letter from Swami Sarvadevananda and permission from the swami in charge of the retreat center – and I’d gotten both. The women’s center allowed no more than eight women at a time so, on a Sunday afternoon, I brought it up with Kevin. “The retreat center said it would be okay if I came up so I have to decide when to go.”

Kevin was at the sink, filling up the tea kettle. He’d gone straight from the gym to the farmer’s market without a shower. The late morning sun was coming through his wild, early silver hair. Sundays are sweet, sleepy; each of us usually puttering somewhere in the house in the comfort of communal solitude.

Kevin walked from the sink to the stove with the kettle and said, teasing, “I’m not going to have to come rescue you from a cult or anything, am I?”

A messy pile of newspapers was on the yellow-and-blue tablecloth in front of me along with the tops of a few strawberries on a small white plate. There was so much light coming from the windows near the table, Kevin hadn’t bothered to turn the lights on over the stove, the darkest part of the kitchen. We were both in our Sunday best: sweats and shorts, loose shirts, shoes meant to be worn, not looked at. Kevin put the kettle down on a burner.

“It’s just a silent retreat,” I said. “There aren’t any group events or talking or even eating together. You even have to bring your own food.”

His back was still to me as he bent down to make sure the gas was turned on under the correct burner even though he knew those burners by heart.

This wasn’t a joke. He was actually worried.

I got up because I couldn’t think what to say. I started to take some useless receipts and out-of-date school lunch forms off the refrigerator door when the kitchen door slammed open. Luke never could just open a door; his entrance was always an event. “Bertrand Russell’s a fucking idiot.” He paused, looking for a reaction, but then barreled on without one. “You think Mickey Morgan would mind if I called my essay: ‘Bertrand Russell’s a Fucking Idiot’?”

Luke was standing in his boxers and socks. There was no muscle, bone, organ or hair follicle in his body that wasn’t straining and stamping towards adulthood but not always at the same time or in the same direction. Still in front of the lichen of promotional magnets, yellowed receipts, a half-full grocery notepad and ancient school announcements, I was torn, between life and lists, between loving and organizing. I gave up on the fridge door. What were my options? Deal with the words or with the passion? Teacher Mom or Etiquette Mom? I hate Etiquette Mom. She ‘s a priss, and pretty ineffective, too. Of course, there was always Tired Mom or Distracted Mom or Keep-to-the-Schedule-Mom or I’m-Talking-to-Your-Father Mom.

Maybe it’s time to experiment with no official role at all.

I turned from the fridge door and said, “I think you have a perfectly grabby title without that one word.”

“Yeah, but he is, he’s a fucking idiot.”

I decided to concentrate on the fact Luke was, well, talking about homework, at least. “What’s this essay about?”

“God.”

“God?”

“God.” He swiped a glass from the cupboard and got between me and the refrigerator to pull the cranberry juice out of it.

I threw the papers I’d taken off the door into the trash and said, “How long is it supposed to be?”
“The usual. Two to three pages.”

That made sense. God, in two or three pages. By Wednesday. My insanity is spreading.

Or maybe he’s just fifteen.

When I was fifteen I took a stance that all music was bad, that it filled up space in brains like so much cotton, protecting people from the sharp edges of their thoughts. I took it mostly to see what would happen. It was thrilling standing out there alone on a plank, seeing what passion I could stir up just with words and stubbornness.

Kevin, who’s usually game for debates, was staying focused on his tea-making so I bit: “So why is Bertrand Russell an idiot?”

“He takes the position that Thomas Aquinas’ Prime Mover theory – you know the one that says that of course God exists because nothing can start moving without something making it move?” He waited, glaring. He’d even stopped mid-pour. When I nodded, he continued pouring but not before roughly wiping his long hair off his face - with the hand with the cap to the cranberry juice bottle still in it. “Well, Russell says that’s bogus because nothing can exist without a cause. Just because he can’t imagine something that could create itself doesn’t mean it can’t exist. I mean, if God is omniscient and omnipotent and infinite, then why couldn’t God create itself?” He threw the bottle of cranberry juice back in the fridge door, turned back to me, and said, “Om – ni - scient. Om - ni - po - tent.” He snorted and then took a swig of his red juice.

This was the child who, at six, announced that he knew there was no God because he thought the Big Bang theory made the most sense as the origin of the universe. Now, he's God’s advocate. Of course, his younger brother, Matt, whose answer when he was four years old to Luke's Big Bang thesis was , simply, that God did exist and who has insisted on saying grace before every meal before anyone can eat since he was five, now thinks he's Wiccan.

I took hold of Luke’s forearm so I could stand on my toes to sort of kiss his scruffy cheek and said, “I know you’ll figure it out.”

“What-ever.” He wheeled around, long hair flying, pounding the living room floor as he left for his room. Just before his bedroom door slammed shut, Kevin and I heard, “Fucking Bertrand Russell.”

Kevin and I just looked at each other in the stillness Luke left behind, the question and answer didn’t need to be said out loud: did we just do the right thing? Not reacting, not going after the language? Probably not, but who knew? Kevin scooped some loose tea from one of his tins of Chinese tea into a small pot.

I said, “Don’t worry, Boy. I’ve stayed away from any temple where they looked way too happy.”

“I’m not sure what that means, but, okay. I just don’t want to have to rescue you.” Kevin was on the other side of the butcher block island slowly pouring the boiling water over the dry leaves.

“Boy, don’t worry. It’s still me.”