A Mostly-Somali Place Near Limerick

I ate in 'Somalia' this lunchtime. It was my first try at eating goat-flesh, and really I would have to define this as good, quite good eating with a salad and loose-side-wrap-pastas in a manner only faintly reminiscent of like Mexican cuisine. This was, really, a working-Somali-immigrant's place to eat, and not destined to become fast-food-ish. I was surrounded by men who were eating hearty and speaking to one another presumably in their Arabic while the cable-TV played 'football' (read 'soccer'); the-price was fine-- for essentially food that somewhere else would be considered international-cuisine-exotica.

In ways for which I had been partially prepared by rooming/sub-letting to Arabs about 16 years ago in the East End, a few Arabic expressions were what I used to be as nice as I could in simply not knowing much about the culture or 'how to do.' Everybody, yea the cook and waiter especially, were helpful in explaining what the proper etiquette would be in this sort of situation. One pointer I got: 'good manners' in eating-Somali means eating with one's fingers-- for which a proper sink-- from cleanliness traditions I seem to recall reading the Hadith/traditions-of-the-Prophet/canon-law-of-Islam. As a richly stimulating 'sense-saturating' place to eat I give high-esteem, must suppress the wordiness to which I am prone, stick to basic. Of course-- good eats and other-sensation-saturation aside one could in the existential-sense call this 'one of the better spots' and seemingly safe as a bank-vault-- plus I for stress repeat that for pauper-me the cost is do-able too-- for my wallet. I dread some xenophobe's grade though-- say from an elitist dining publication-- any number of S*T*A*R*S should include the obviousness that this is a statistical-outlier in a welter of Louisville eateries with the usual 'bell-curve' somewhere here jutting out with this wholly-different phenomenon. I don't exactly know what kind of grade to give this place-- but it is exactly the kind of place I want-- good tasting food in an exciting ambiance, with price good to my dwindling wallet [it is getting into the middle of the month, and the dreg-bitter-ends do come.]

This place in which I dined is located in the International Mall, on York Street west-terminus between 8th and 'Smilin' Irishman Alley' [ a real Louisville place-name.] I took a photo with my digital during this day of snow spits on the way out-- and here have pasted (or whatever the term is) above. In there one can find a great Somali-based 'supermarket'-- with African beans, and whole-grain-brown-rice 'from the foothills of Himalayas.' Specifically, I walked over to this store from other errands in order to check out the teas-- and got some nice Ceylonese loose brown for ~$4, so for that great price I got two tins; the again-friendly attendant pointed out that there were here some fine Kenyan teas for about the same price, but 'in bags.' These folks seem fond of tea-making: I got for just about $10 a copper-kettle that I immediately on use termed 'keeper-great' for its quick brew; there was a lip into which one could insert a tea-ball (you can get them over at Krogers) -- but the fit with the American ball seemed imperfect-- so I wired a hook that famously accommodates my tea-making.

So: on getting back from the ~ 9000 step trek including these first-time-eats, second-time-grocery-shopping, I made several potfuls of brisk loose tea with my pot-ball combination. As I did my 'biometrica' (glucose, galvanic-skin-response, TPPRs etc.) [I have excellent ways of preventing this ingest from really becoming an impediment to somnolence later tonight.] I felt myself happily situated between 'all the Ireland, all the Deutschland, all the 'Hispanica,' and now all the Somali-Africa I can process meaningfully.

Limerick is beginning to 'sprout' with such new-things-under-the-sun; this would seem to be the-return to an old Limerick tradition of hospitality and graciousness, now resurrecting from the wastes of recently-bygone-hell-fires. So: as the snow spits out my window, I can look on Limerick with an emergent neighborly pride.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens
Time of Compline
Day of Ste. Kentigerna, Anchoress (Western Church)
Day of the Synaxis of John Baptist (Orthodoxy)

How I-- a Phenotypically-Somewhat-Beige-Man
Did Do Kwanzaa

I lit a purple candle-- for penitance-- during this Kwanzaa season-- for the sins of my Fathers-- for whatever I have sinned overtly covertly against the dignity of the African, all all all the legacy of slavery, and of its vast illusions. This purple candle was indeed given to me by a woman-of-color-black-- to lift consciousness for a homeless man at a Drop-In center (who just may be black, given the usual rude-breaks of things.) There will never be enough penance from Whitey to undo completely this stain, but I have tried, I have tried, I have tried, in a slow epigenetic ontogeny from the motley 'beige-like' phylogeny from whence I germed...

And of these forbears motley, 'bleached' somewhat like me, 'unbleached black & mild' neighborly, my thoughts backward went into the well of time, seeking Truth much-prior to Reconciliation...

I am variously describable: in my forebears have been racists, in my direct lineage forbears I have reports from couisinage that I hail from certain Underground Railroad provenance-- said to be the work and protraction in life of "Red" Jim [there were two Jims-- twins maybe-- born to perhaps-humorous Francis Faulkner and Thomas Paine Stephens-- 'red-haired' so Red-- 'black-haired' so Black.] From early life onward, Red Jim was progressive in outlook, and shared not the apparent esteem of his father for the sin/status-symbol of professing ownership of others-- to wit what I mean!!! And so I am told that in the consortium of Nancy Ryle of the Maryland (I think perhaps Catholic) Ryles there was the movement to get black folk to Indiana-- which officially never had slavery at all-- and just as officially Red Jim had slaves-- just as unofficially he got them from his steal-away-to-Jesus-farm to (?House of?) Rising Sun, Indiana--- or so I was informed by another Nancy Ryle-- this a third cousin-- linked to Elbert Ryle genea-historian of their scionage-- on or about November 1965. 'Lige (Elijah) my paternal grandfather seemingly also rebelled against father-- a penchant known to Freudians-- and was racist Scottish Rite-- and my granny dying fingered him to be with the KKK-lynchers. My Dad ['Punk' Willard] rode-fence on this issue-- racist in young adulthood-- mellowed much out of that in later life.

And whether of rebellion along Freudian lines, or for the compelling reality of grim unfairness abiding Jim-Crow-Kaintuck-to-this-day (KY invented 'Jim Crow'-- Plessy v. Ferguson)-- and the Christian teaching sidelong of Miss June Brown, second-grade-teacher, or just getting all the gulley-washers of kiddy Reformed-Jewish-inspired/pitched electronic media from Cincinnati (Uncle Al, Stringbean, Skipper Ryle)-- I early on wanted to redress for the sins of 'Lige and Punk and Thomas Paine. With the tipping into the precursor social science training emerging from what would become (now) Northern Kentucky University-- I did a stint as 'go-fer' with the [black] Cincinnati Herald peddling ads to racist-whites, contributing some copy betimes-- joined (when I could afford the dues!) NAACP-- promoted Jesse Jackson for President, Shelby Lanier Jr. (here, Jefferson County) for sheriff, and of course vigorously Brother Barack. No sympathy-vote for me is with this expected nor asked this Kwanzaa however.

Yet at the same time I was operating under some testable illusions, which now seem rather emphatically discredited. I here implicated Red Jim I think falsely as I heard he'd been [drafted-into 'Lige said] the Confederate Army ~ 1862-- but now piecing altogether with the Verstehenanalyse instructed to me by soc sci I think likeliest this was more like abduction of hot-hot-one by the Rebs to points-safely-South. {By that I mean that the before-during-and-after of Red Jim's life-- and his consent to 1st Nancy's begetting of Mandy and Sauny-- by a Freedman during internment-- with Mandy and Sauny freed on Emancipation but by all accounts returning for reasons now understood to Boone County thence--during internment-- according to my Grandmother [!!! disapproving this !!!] Grace Anderson Stephens on or about December 1961 after 'Lige demised.} The 'after' for Red Jim and Nancy also included such anti-racist affiliations as promotion of the Populists, Progressivism, the Cooperative Movement, scientific agriculture (like raising now-ubiquitous soybeans 'steada' pigs), and of course the non-racist Oddfellows. In the light of the slim but evidenced written account of Red Jim by 'Lige-- and by all the corroborating evidence from 2nd Nancy Ryle & Nanny Grace-- I have to say the balance now falls on letting-Red-Jim-pass, 'well done, good and faithful servant!'

I so want to look up the scionage of relatives Sauny and Mandy, bid Hello Howdy to the real-time, as I think surely 1st Nancy Ryle and Jim-hers did-- fie on the aversion 'Lige may have had that Nancy's love went to Mandy and Sauny [as much at least] as he. Fie on me, an unfinished terminating project. In my heart, these longed-loved-ones with Mandy and Sauny forever will be 'young gifted and black, and when I look back, I see you... standing there' ['Negro National Anthem.'] No forgiveness can be given for the outrages my pinky people did to you, but perhaps in this Genesis Country, busy-being-born, some new creature Kindness can civilly address redress me with my purple candle, for my sorrows as Chief-Sinner, Ass Braying in This Desert... at Kwanzaa dimming.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens
Time of Compline Late
Day of St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzus

Limerick Louisville Kaintuck
Under-Lying the Lie of Evolution
(Erosively)

Here 'tis: the Coptic/Pharaonic/Egyptian fine day Kioak 22 (New Year's Eve, 2008)-- and I shall get to the bearing and import of such factuality momentarily...

This night I thought of what Biblers Blasphemous (to counter the spirit of 2 Corinthians 3:6) call so oft THE LIE OF EVOLUTION so as 'twas a clear ice night, I went out to the cold for a brisk micro-micro-micro-trek-- as far as the irony-iced mud where the Desert's parking lot and the waste-place is (@ 721 Oldham N y'know.) LO AND BEHOLD TO THE ASTONISHMENT OF THE FLAT EARTH I spied-me the known rise (~3 inches ~76.2 mm); there was a silt of soil and vege and chemo stuff also frozen, but at a depth of ~7 mm on the concrete driveway abutting the asphalt; KNOWN accurately but not with precision/exactitude is the dictum in earth-science that soil in general erodes at a rate betwixt .4 and 1 mm-- so by this standard this silt atop rock-hard concrete ages to be accurately (not precisely) within the range 7-17.5 years; from the very and quite-cultural look of The Desert this would seem to be a Post-WWII through Begin-Cold-War architecture, and this natural fill atop such construct appears to be about-right-- but with the certitude that nothing cruel-and-unusual/signatory-nor-wondrous happened to let be this in the dense sense, but in the Wonder Which Awes, there are indeed some Miracles (yea !Quantum Miracles! too) and will expand, will explain.

There would seem to be hardly anything difficult to believe that the erosions which I impute are real, and of the God of Natural Law's True History. But live-WE (you vicariously through musing me) in The Desert (I repeat) Limerick Louisville Kaintuck... the fond (French-Voyageur-argot- the Rene-Robert-LaSalle word here-- 'bottom-land, lowest-point') being contiguous with the Falls of the Ohio shell-bed 129 meters (423.22 feet) and biggest hilltop around at Dodge Hill 253.59 meters (832 feet) (with Limerick approximately at 163.06 meters-- 535 feet.) The 'delta'/subtrasand of this would be 124.59 meters or 124590 mm (! YOU wise-guys cipher the footsies!)

Given then the generous and accurate standard we are provided therefore from sphere-earth-disciplines this dry-ice night, merrily Happy New Yearing on Koiak 22 (a repeat of a 'plant' from above titling) we accurately-- albeit not precisely admittedly-- calculate the age of Geo Louisville from these good guesstimates-- which seem to jibe with the anthropo-geo-history here Desertly -- as aged between 124 590 and 311 475 years-- with the fair assumption that while we Whiteys have plowed/gutted/pre-eroded-quick for about 300 years here not more-- in this vaster span of time-- so we are erosion minimal-maximalists but small in The God's Eye. Mind you, I am doing these calculations by the stuff at my hands and feet here now-- not ready-referencing to what The Experts (flat-earth and sphere-earth) have to contribute to this here now Limerick Louisville Kaintuck New Years Koiak 22 subject.

Does Jahweh-- She-Who-IS-That-She-IS -- have a problem of this estimate?? I know no more than Immanuel Kant in this Transcendental Judgment-- believed as posited but upon which The Veil is cast to me, Ignoramus. YET there are the Bibler Blasphemers who hold to letter-not-spirit in all every Firstness. For these, there is the literal Bibling way of saying that once in a 24X7 Jah Yes made Makings-- and by the arithmetic of Bible-reads-conscientious--

~Venerable Bede ('saint,' theologue, scientist), Earth Began = 3952 BC
~James Ussher ([Anglican] bishop, theologue), Earth Began =4004 BC
~Johann Kepler (astrologer, theologue, astronomer), Earth Began = 3992 BC
~Isaac Newton (sometime alchemist/mystic, chemist, mathematician), Earth Began =4000 BC
...With arithmetic mean therefore of 3987 BC; with ~ standard-deviation therefore of 23.86 years, (+/-) 95% CI = ~ 3939-4034 BC.

Anybody say 'but a thousand years is a Day and a Day is a thousand years?' -- the 1st line of defense-- it always seems a matter with these Bibler Blasphemers of proving-something more than living[for]-something-- in the usual hackeyed crustacea of argumentation-- Well this would give us NOT the equivalent with 3987 +2009 X 1000 = the putative estimate of the REAL Big Bang some 9-6 000 000 000 years prior-- of minimalist 124590 X 365.25 days indexed hereupon-- or whatever astrology one wants to use, permuting all the days and thousands I mean do not make a chronograph that keeps time.

And what pray-tell is all this New Year's reference to the Pharaonic Calendar?? Well, using the best (and conscientiously with zero mystique by able scholars-- who cannot but include Newton and Kepler and yea Bede and yea Ussher) the Bible-Liter-ed 3987 BC stuff falls about 1000 years short of the beginning of the first-known human calendars in Egypt-- continued unto this day by the Coptic Church (!certainly! Orthodox)... for this Egyptian use dates from ~ 5000 BC.

How IRREVERENT is this turn/treatment/interpretation/hermeneutic I give to geo-anthropo-history? To this I turn to the lulluby of Genesis 1st stuff-- with Leonine/internal rhymes, external/ending rhymes, and exactly metered anapestic [ - - ' ]. WHAT IS THIS IF NOT EXACTLY A VERY GOOD POEM TO HEAR IN HEBREW AS READ IN 'THE NATIVE' BY OMER FRENKEL ABOUT EVOLUTION-- THE CHANGE OF THE SEASONS WITH 'THE TIME AND PURPOSE UNDER HEAVEN.' It from the first 2 chapters is a dead-ringer-poetic of the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man using Darwin's metaphors... Frankly I cannot see what 'the fundamentals' mean but what linguists tell us 'the message is' I mean = meter + meaning = the-poetic.

IF there are Preachers who try to blackmail me with any suggestion that this is somehow Un-Christian, I would suggest he (as 'twould almost for-sure be a 'manly' one) get into reads of the Roman Catholic priests Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (evolutionary bio) and Georges Lemaitre (patriarchal Big Bang theorist); then he may latterly get into the work Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? by Disciple Michael Ruse. Actually, the message to honest-Baptist-toddler I was came home a few days after Nursery Sunday School to see the [anthropoid] apes-- gorillas chimps baboons-- in the Cincinnati Zoo-- and then thereafter I knew the Oral-Torah/credal-allegory which parables [Hu-]man and all his stumbling falling thrownnesses.

So now I think I will try hearing an MP3 of Frenkel's Bereshith-1/Genesis-1st. You blackmailers will just have to get Right with The God-- the One who makes crustacea Celesta channelings Chronology...

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Ass, Sinner
Time of Midnight (Coptic Office)
Vigil of Feast of Mary-Mother-of-God/Theotokos (Roman Church)

Still-Birthing:
Beating-Boozing-in-Biosphere
Thoughts at Christmastide

What I am now, reiteratively, is known to God alone. But I shall now in celebrating Birthing at Solstice, the Holy Nativity, may-be that I think there is a monastic (Greek: 'solitary one') who shuns all visage of Sin, and there is one who places himself in the very Evil-eye-ogle. Whatever I am, however in contrast, there can be no glances away from the fact that I obtain as a sinful example of an unbalanced kind/species which misses mark (Greek: amartia) by always that Evil-eye bulls-eye on imbalance, what will not float, will sink in the ocean Chaos.

Limerick drinks now by night. By day, there is some hint of the Serene Sacramental Silence where God meeteth hu-man haplessly drunken dastardly. Somewhere (where? I pray) virginal (She, looking around, finds it in the Cleft Crevice Cervix Somewhere) pregnant Mother takes her beating, and homeless sans Holiday Inn (r) there Fleshes, always a miracle, always with some travail and flogging. And the ilk of Adam drinks on. Kill everyone who pisseth against the Wall (1 Kings 16:11 KJV--and who but the dangle-down-drippers might that be?)

'Sin hath left a Crimson stain.' A solitary one needs to see and hear-- at least with Mind's Eye anticipating this God's Eye-- all the vexed vulgarity we ARE-- not to turn away-- but ever to turn over and over and over (as the pattern of we-Drunks is to go off-wagon-for-a-12-Step-bender) to a Wholiness and Holiness which sounds only like a Punchline to a joke in this Abortion Factory-- but possible impossibility what we may-be if we shall see (the pounding fist on the Mother's Birthday belly) Strange Fruits of Christmas.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Sinner, Ass
Time of None
Nativity of Our Lord

A Moving Sister, Wanting to Move In

I hope it is OK to say this... I hope there will be no hard feelings that erupt volcanically as hot liquid dolomite... One never knows, these days here...

A Sister knocked on my door approximately two days ago, from the [by residents of The Desert considered the-most-dangerous] stairwell side. What do you want, I ask after hearing the unrecognized woman:name. I want to move in. I says, I am very sorry. There is hardly any room in here but for me. You cannot move in. She: I mean I want to use your telephone, so's I can call ___ to make arrangements; let me use your telephone. Me: There is a pay phone on the corner at 8th & Oldham; there's a pay phone at the Konvenient at 7th & Oak; use one of those; do you have the coinage? She: I got the money; let me use your telephone. Me: I don't like this Sister-- I shall have to close the door to you.

For in such a way in The Desert great mischief has been wrought historically... mostly brutal and unpublishable here, of which I know only a convulsively disturbing iceberg-tip-tidbit. In my way of this sort of problemsolving, I may have prayed in the walkabout I do-- strongly resembling a [Wolfgang] Kohler monkey trying for the Banana-Grail-- of vexed walkabout and talkabout [to some who live not alone a 'crazy habit'] until I latched from an old mantra-- Macbethian Shakespearean -- THE TIMES ARE OUT OF JOINT--

To which I can corroborate with the recall that about sunset midst the singlets snowflakes I saw a rifleshot from here a posterboard majikmarked sign I WILL GIVE YOU MONEY TODAY HARD CASH FOR YOUR HOUSE NOW [so call this number, immediately inferred to be a puky sign of these hard times, with Sister {did she live purely as a nun to traject to my door with her moving question?} being one with this signing demise.]

The sense was: if one lives for something, then with nothing-- all I have essentially known in life and love-- now one can live, live well. I know not about the value-survival of Sister at my door moving in, or of the ones who need spot cash from Mr. Sharkey-- just this one time of course-- the the going down, devolution, dying of the Gilded Age and its wastrels. To the degree that I have-been/am wastrel I too shall go down-- all-have-sinned-will-die-- there are no saints in slain Sodom. The best we can do, Prodigals, Us-Wastrels, is now play the best hand until we crap out. Just don't whine about it, and as there is none other way, go with God Allah Jahweh.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Sinner
Terce Time
Day of Ste. Lucy (Western Church)
Day of St. Herman of Alaska, American, Wonderworker (Orthodoxy)

[Photo of Someone from Wikipedia-- under GNU Free License-- Will Donate to Wiki ASAP]

Something Like Exactly March 16, 1966: A Faithful Dialectic

{Perhaps for the weather or the whether this fine day in The Desert, Limerick, Louisville, KY I do now/then compose-me to-say:}

He [on seeing Me with this handwrit: Father Louis—Please tell me—where on Earth is there an Holy Place?] Come in.

Me. I don’t need to bother you. I have written my notes so’s not to violate your Silence.

He. Oh… Come in…we could gesticulate out here in the open, but you would not understand…Out of the principle of Charity, I can talk to you as a man. [On being-seated in his cinderblock—smaller than mine in Desert now] One thing needs to be clarified immediately before we go any further at all: IF you are a homosexual, I shall have NOTHING to do with you, and this will be the utter end of this conversation.

Me [in sense totally OK but inferential]. Oh! Father I am NOT a homosexual, have had nothing but trouble in churches and out of churches with homosexuals. But I would say Father that from the listening I have done to the little prisses who brother retreats here for the high-schoolers—saying that it is un-Catholic to ever ever ever go to Protestant worship—I’d say this makes me wonder about the homosexuality of these guys a little.

He [a gentle nod].

Me … And what is more, coming from where I have grown—the Southern Baptist Church—which teaches nothing but hatred for Catholics—even my Pastor [Bob Couch] at Florence Baptist made the whole congregation against Catholic kids being bussed to St. Paul’s. To come down here and hear the mirror-reversal of this teaching by Catholics by these prisses makes me just want to go home, and do worship without any kind of church. But your Catholicism is interesting to me—is mysterious—I want to know it here because I guess it is the best Catholic stuff going. But mostly, I am tired of RELIGIOUS HATRED… all I ever knew in Baptist-stuff, and all I seem to be getting here. Nothing seems to be sacred—at the University of Kentucky the Youth for Christ—I think they’re with the Church of Christ or something—anyhow they brought in a magician to do what Protestants call ‘witnessing’—this means hard-selling you on religion Father—you may be less familiar with this than I—but in this particular case back last fall at UK in 1965 Youth For Christ witnessed with this magician; what he did was have a box—and proved the Resurrection of Jesus by putting a toy into the box—closing the box—and then opening it to prove that now Jesus was not in the grave—a cheap magic trick. Father, I know it is proper to believe in the Resurrection, so forgive me if I suggest that if I had doubts ever about the Resurrection of Jesus—it would be a sheer Act of God—not a magic trick. Nothing is holy if this can be witnessed for truth.

He [bushy eyebrows raised—like I have now-- but shave]. Just a minute. This is interesting. I hope you would not mind if I wrote about this…and maybe talked about it with others.

Me [lifting spiritedly]. Sure. I’m flattered. Anyway though what I am trying to say Father is that no place I can detect is Holy—by which I mean devoted-to-The-Other/God/Jahweh.

He [seemingly puzzling too]. But what about the Holy Land, Israel? [After a moment of silence, not too uncomfortable] No, I see what you mean. Israel right now is not a very holy place either.

Me. I had my hopes up about this place. But it looks like you’ve got some problems, too. For one thing, this looks a whole lot like a cheese factory, with a store outlet where you can buy trinkets too.

He. That charge has a familiar ring to me. Yet, as I said, everything that humankind does is an affront to God, Lad, what you do and certainly what I do cannot match the perfect holiness appropriate to God.

Me. Do you think I should be less judgmental? I fret about that—I know I am quick to judge.

He [smiling]. That COULD be. This place is just a part of the human condition, like everything else.

Me. What would you suggest I do Father?

He. Well, maybe start by counting your blessings.

Me. Blessings? I am broke as a joke, and really struggling in just about every other way. Girls seem to jilt me for fun and games. I get booped out of a lot of stuff for reasons nobody ever explains—just mark it up they do to the-breaks. What blessings?

He. Well, you’re from Kentucky.

Me [genuinely astonished and perplexed]. Kentucky? I hate everything about this Negro-hating hot Fundamentalist hole. What blessings about being in Kentucky?-—A place I have simply happened and cannot get out of for the life of me…

He. No Kentucky is a wonderful state, a wonderful place…

Me. It’s hot with Baptists, though, Ohio to Tennessee, Virginia to Missouri. Baptists in the country are almost alright—you know they go about calling one another Brother—vote in the same way that monks do to get things done—and when they are in the country you can see their wee white churches that are almost OK—in fact if Baptists were not so hardshell about this Bible and Negro thing they would almost be OK—something like a religious order where you can get married.

He [silent nod].

Me. … But in the Big City with the Brick Edifices and the we-don’t-believe-really cosmopolitans Baptist is just the phoniest baloney on Christianity and I do want out…I am shopping around at the Newman Center and places—for the place where holiness is a possibility. I am hoping.But this is frustrating. I CERTAINLY would like to be in a religious order—but only one where marriage is a possibility. What you got here is almost something OK but BOY I do not want to take a vow not to have sex—I am reading Freud and know that there-just-isn’t-anything-like-a-sexless-life. The libido applies to everything human and mammal. What you got down here just seems rife for every kind of mischief and pollution—which you call an affront to God—some of which you seemed to be talking about when I just arrived here today.

He [silence…not at all a Trappist silence, I inferred].

Me. Father. To me marriage is the Sacrament that is open to me—priests get the priesthood and that is Holy Office—but marriage replicates the Holy Family—Mary Joseph Jesus—and should not be shunned in a healthy community.

He [after a moment] It was God who sent you here. [Then, with another silence following, presumably with thought]. Tell me about yourself. How do you stand on the Vietnam War?...

Me. I think it’s evil. I’m having problems with the render-to-Caesar thing, and could never kill folks who look like what I think Lao Tze would look like. But: I am a fighter, will throw a punch [subsequently disavowed, about 40 years later] now and again, but Man this war is evil. Nothing but white people killing little yellow people who look like Lao Tze to me.

He. Think about Conscientious Objection. This is open to you, and you should consider it. The War IS evil—another affront to God. ALL war is evil. It needs to be resisted at every turn.

Me. What about my throw-a-punch-sometimes tendencies?

He. Pray about it. God will show you The Way. God can correct our affronts and imperfections.

…And so for awhile longer, the conversation went on; then this-Me left to go back to the Retreat House place….On my taking leave, he asked that I pray for him about the operation he was soon to receive, on his back, in a Louisville hospital at the end of this particular month [March, 1966.]

{RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED
TO THE MEMORY OF ST. THOMAS MERTON

--Vernon Lynn Stephens
M.S.S.W.
D.S.M. IV-TR # 296.44}

My Fascinating, Fun-Filled Not-Prophetic Dream
[Just Now: During my Power-Nap]

Dreams are just static electricity in your head, in that death-close-phasing of sleepy-pie. But I did think I would tell all of you about the REM-state-great I just happened in my power nap just moments ago, in the cold room [may-be 38 F] in which I winter Birthing Jesus.

I dreamed that the BIG RED HEAD COP PWEEESEMANZ (Barasha at Like's ~3rd&Ky. said his moniker was H) who would do those EMS calls for invol psych on me at DimitrovvMolitovvCocktail Rooming-- the one who always had his blackflashlight or billie (y'know why) and handcuffing me for nutwalk would kick me to the floor for a beatin [this you see was then my disorderly conduct disturbing the peace of p'lice]--- THAT COP--

--Sure did get laid off in these Glorious CUTS by Po-Lice Abram-Sohnz-Squad and failing to get help failing to get unemployment [as was always the case when I tried] and failing to get into Humanity Hospital for MH -- goes down to McAlpin and after some beatings by goons and some robbings and zero Good Samaritans pitches himself under a passerby barge, and the Cappy thinking it to be a pitched bargehand he had then not to pay, cared less than I do, pragmatically speaking, and went on went on went on AS THE WORLD TURNS the soap opera is---

Friends who go to Church: it is not Christian to have such a dream, it is sin not to love old Red as I love myself somewhat. So assuming this is Diabolic [the Bible says several places that dreams kin lie], I bid it and all cruel entitities just to DEEP-SIX for GOD IS LOVE--

--Vernon Lynn Stephens
D.S.M. IV-TR # 296.44
M.S.S.W.