I'm done with regret, thinking about bagel

The Column: 02.24.22

Lent is upon us starting Wednesday except for us old fundamentalists for whom it is a yearlong observance. We didn’t go to movies or imbibe euphoric beverages or use tobacco or read fiction and, for fear it might lead to dancing, we didn’t even tap our feet or sing rhythmically, and so Lent was merely Catholics imitating us, and now, in my twilight years, I’ve already given up most of the things I might easily sacrifice, such as Debussy, for example. I can’t stand Debussy. I never could. Same with superhero movies, chicken livers, buttermilk, chin-ups, Henry James, the list goes on.

To us old Brethrenites, the idea of Lent, forty days of repentance, is odd: we sat under serious preaching about imminent death and so we were told to repent NOW, this very moment, which was problematic for me as a child, listening to the preacher describe the sinking of the Titanic, souls swept into eternity, which could happen to us at any moment, though we were not out on the Atlantic but on 14th Avenue in south Minneapolis, so I should repent and come to the Lord now, immediately, but I felt this should involve weeping, falling to my knees, not just checking a box but crying out to heaven, overwhelmed with feeling, but how can you overwhelm yourself? I couldn’t. I envied Southerners their emotional liquidity. We of the northern latitudes did not have their latitude.

In church a couple weeks ago, someone mentioned a course to help us on our spiritual journey during Lent, and the term “spiritual journey” is one of those clichés that clicks my OFF switch. I am not on a journey, I’m simply crossing the street watching the WALK sign click off the seconds, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, as I think about being run over and killed and I arrive on the other side with two seconds to spare. The story of my life. I’m a lucky man.

I read of the lives of saints such as Paul Farmer, the physician and anthropologist who died recently in Rwanda. He was a Harvard grad who devoted himself to public health in impoverished areas, Haiti, Africa, Mexico, the Navajo Nation, training doctors, opening hospitals, going door to door when necessary to treat the sick. I know a few saints personally and it can be difficult to strike up a conversation with a saint. My cousin, Alec, for example, an astrophysicist who aligned himself with suffering people and hiked across parts of Africa and the Middle East to see life close up. I walked with him in silence to the cemetery for his grandma’s interment and all I could think of was the terrible joke about Jesus on the cross calling to Peter three times and Peter saying, “What, Lord?” and Jesus saying, “Peter, I can see my house from here.” God help me. Talk about inappropriate. Beyond the pale. I am confessing a sin to you, dear reader, because, after a lifetime as a writer, I love you as never before. Back in my youth when I was brilliant and beyond understanding, I was superior to you but I got over it, thanks to a number of truly dumb things I’ve done that were dumber than anything you’ve ever heard, dumber than dirt, which I may tell you about someday when you’re older and more sympathetic, but not now.

For Lent I wish to give up sadness and regret, which I’ve clung to long enough, and try something else. The COVID lockdown gave us a long stretch of sacrifice, life reduced to the essentials, though my love and I did go out to a restaurant the other night, sitting outdoors under a heat lamp on a bitterly cold night, just for the romance of it, came home frozen and lay embraced under a comforter to warm up. It was an unintentional moment of beauty, presented by happenstance.

And now I’m thinking of the bagel my wife says she’s going to go out and bring back for me, a fresh sesame seed bagel with cream cheese with scallions. I am already grateful though she hasn’t left yet; I’m grateful for the anticipation. I respect Debussy in principle but this bagel is more important than his misty music. Toasted light brown, the cream cheese melting around the fringe. She is still sitting, working the crossword puzzle, but this bagel is turning into the high point of my day, the bagel of all bagels, the bagel Hegel would’ve finagled with Puccini’s cream cheese and scallions that win medallions from Italians.

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Our featured broadcast this week comes from a show we did 21 years ago in Edinburgh, Scotland. The guests were Ian Rankin, Dave Richardson from The Boys of the Lough, and the Battlefield Band. Join us on Facebook at 5PM CT or if you can’t wait CLICK HERE.