#207: Johan van Parys: Thoughts on Forgiveness

Dr. Johan van Parys is Director of Liturgy at Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, and the lead article in the Sunday June 27 church bulletin was this powerful commentary.
Thoughts on Forgiveness
Paris is one of those magical cities. No matter what time of year one visits, the city has a way of capturing a person’s imagination. I don’t quite remember how many times I have been to Paris. Growing up in neighboring Belgium it made for an easy trip. Surprisingly, there was one monument never visited until my last trip there: the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation, the memorial to those deported from France during World War II.
My grandfather and the other men working in my grandmother’s shoe factory were deported to Nazi camps because she refused to make shoes for the Nazi army. The family home was occupied and my grandmother and great-grandmother were made to work for Nazi officers. When my grandmother died, I inherited her papers including the moving letters my grandfather sent from the camp as well as letters from one of the officers who had occupied my grandmother’s house. The latter include descriptions of the devastation of his village; about the death of his two sons; and about the horrors of the war. Most striking was his plea for forgiveness.
Until I read these letters I had been unable to visit any death camps or memorials for those who died in the Second World War. After getting a glimpse of the power of forgiveness that was revealed to me through these letters, I was moved to learning and visiting. Thus I went to the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation. It was an amazing experience.
At the edge of one of the islands in the river Seine a narrow and steep stairway leads down to the memorial courtyard. A low-level fenced-in window is the only place that allows a glimpse of the outside. A severe sculpture representing imprisonment and torture hangs in front of this window. On the opposite side, a narrow door guarded by two oppressive columns barely allows entrance into the memorial itself.
The main installation, on the far end of the foyer, is a long narrow corridor lined with 200,000 quartz crystals, one for each man, woman, child deported from France by during the Second World War. A rod-iron gate prevents entrance. An eternal flame burns at the very end of the corridor.
This extraordinary building captures those who enter it from the very first moment, guiding them down the narrow steps, through the courtyard, into the foyer, to the wall of remembrance and the eternal flame. This journey takes each person through the reality of the suffering of these particular people and all human suffering, to the light of hope for humanity which too often seems untenable and almost absurd.
My walk back to the hotel took me past Notre Dame Cathedral. I could not but enter and light a candle for all those who are suffering at the hand of other people. I stayed for Vespers and prayed “Thy Kingdom Come” with more fervor than ever before.

#201 – Dick Bernard: Sock Monkey takes a trip

Back in April, my son Tom alerted me to watch for a package containing a Sock Monkey. It was in Michigan, he said, and our home was its next stop. When I received it I was to let people who knew his daughter (thus my granddaughter) Lindsay see the monkey, and write a note or such wishing well her and her-husband-to be Jeffrey.
We talked by phone, and Tom mentioned that the monkey was his idea. He could remember seeing such a monkey at some relatives house years earlier, and he thought it would be a neat idea to have a Sock Monkey carry a message of good wishes to the newlyweds.
It was certainly a neat idea.
Sock Monkey came, and I got into the task far more so than I had expected.
Sock Monkey went out to North Dakota to the ancestral farm, and took a photo with Tom’s grandmother’s brother and sister.
Back in the Twin Cities, the Monkey got around, visiting all of the places that Tom had lived and gone to school before he migrated to Colorado many years ago. Sock Monkey posed with Tom’s sisters and their families, and with friends.
I worried about misplacing, or forgetting, the Monkey in its makeshift home – a small packing box.
Memorial Day we began our trip west via the Black Hills with an overnight in the famous Wall S.D. Sock Monkey got free ice water at the Wall Drug (well, figuratively speaking); made a call out west from the phone booth in front of the drug store; posed with the dinosaur, and was pretty generally was a pretty typical tourist. Walking through the Wall Drug with the Monkey I found a whole rack full of Sock Monkey’s! The friendly monkey had a family reunion, right there on the Main Street of Wall!
We drove on, through eastern Wyoming, where Sock Monkey (below) took a moment to perch on the dashboard and take a look at Wyoming’s scenery.

Sock Monkey visits Wyoming


Safely in Denver, I delivered Sock Monkey to the father of the bride, who, at the reception presented the Sock Monkey to the new couple. I gathered this was a surprise gift, but one of the highlights of their wedding weekend.
At the gift opening the day after the wedding, one of the highlight gifts was a Sock Monkey stained glass window made by one of the relatives in Michigan. It was a hit.
That Sock Monkey was a very simple idea.
But what a wonderful one!
Related posts: here and here.

Sock Monkey gets undivided attention at the Wedding Reception


A wedding gift: Sock Monkey in stained glass!

#200 – Dick Bernard: Fathers Day

Happy Father’s Day all you Dads, and those whose role is or has been or will be that of “Dad”.
Wikipedia notes, without any fanfare, that this is the 100th anniversary of the observance of Father’s Day, it’s first observance on June 19, 1910.
I’ve been around long enough to have been a Dad not far short of half of those 100 years. Most Dad’s days have been pretty normal days; once in a great while comes one that’s not so hot; and if you’re really lucky, every now and then comes one that is a peak experience, not always on the day itself.
This year was one of those “peak experience” years, two weeks ago Friday, when I watched my oldest son give away his daughter, my granddaughter, to her new husband, Jeffrey. It was one of those “chest-swelling, button-splitting proud” moments for me. Leaving the Chapel, people in the pews applauded we grandparents of bride and groom, and I self-consciously waved. It’s a difficult experience to describe.
This Father’s Day also marks the end of a year spent trying to summarize nearly 400 years of my French-Canadian father’s family history. I’ve been going through boxes of documentation, recollections, letters, pictures: mother’s, father’s, sons and daughters, extended family…. For me the dates of birth, marriage, death are not nearly as interesting as the stories of these assorted names who are the roots of my particular family tree. The Bernard family story includes all of the elements of the story of most every family – memorable things, things you’d rather not have known. It’s just how it is.
Father’s Day came to be as an appropriate recognition somewhat akin to the earlier and still better known Mother’s Day. Father’s Day was, apparently, a woman’s idea at the beginning.
There can be endless discussion of why Mother’s Day came earlier than Father’s Day, or why it seems to still have a higher place in the pecking order of observances even today, but those can take place off to the side, and individually.
Being “Father” or “Mother” has traditionally and likely always will mean different roles and responsibilities which evolve over time in each family. (I’ve been both father and mother on more than one occasion – that is another story.)
Recently, a wonderful relative, now 90, wrote me about a long, long ago happening in her home when she was five years old. Her Grandpa – her Dad’s Dad, and my Great-Grandfather – had come to live with them on the farm after his wife had died. One day he fell down the steps and had to be hospitalized. After some time in the hospital, a decision needed to be made about him coming back to the farm for his last days, or remaining in the hospital. He died in the hospital a few months later. To this day there remain some residual feelings about whether or not Great-Grandpa’s last days were handled appropriately, and there are still conversations many years later. (In my opinion, there is no question: his last days were handled very appropriately.)
Agnes, with the directness a person her age is entitled to, wrote about the decision making process at that time: “Mom could not take care of him. [She c]ould not depend on Dad or brothers to help. Farm men don’t spend their time in the house.” And so it went. Another dilemma in the country, repeated endless times, people doing the best that they could under not always the best circumstances.
As we deal with the complexities of our own lives, a Happy Day to All, especially Dad’s.

#196 – Dick Bernard: Lindsay and Jeffrey's Wedding

Okay, okay.
Here’s a slide show of a wedding with 84 slides, and I took them all. (Simply click on the first photo in the group, and then you can play this as a slide show, as you wish.)
Do cut me some slack. After all, it was granddaughter Lindsay’s wedding, June 4, 2010, at the beautiful Red Rocks in Morrison CO, with other events in Denver suburbs Lakewood and Littleton. We had a wonderful trip, and time.
Some of you know the “players” in the slide show; others may know no one. I’m the white-bearded, white-haired guy…there aren’t many of us to pick from! In the photos are my siblings and my kids and many of their spouses. At the wedding, a few deer were a delightful distraction (the man officiating reminded us that he knew the deer were there, right behind him, but we were in the chapel for a wedding!) But how can you not notice?
Simply Sloppy Joe’s is there in the slides: it is a small, well known popular walk-in eatery in Denver area, the enterprise of Lindsay’s Mom, with her Dad’s help. The business name says it all. A few standard varieties of Sloppy Joe with a weekly special. Even Sloppy Joe cookies. They’re a local institution, well known and loved in the Denver area, at the corner of Pierce and Mississippi in suburban Lakewood. Check them out if you’re in Denver. If you know someone in Denver area, let them know of Simply Sloppy Joe’s!
But this slide show is about a wedding. And it was, truly, one of the nicest, best weddings I’ve ever attended. Sure, I’m biased. But it was.
In the images are some clues about the high points of the wedding.
There’s a sock monkey who appears in a few places. “Sock Monkey” travelled all over creation, and appeared in lots of photographs on both sides of the new family. The images ended up in an album, an enduring message about the strength of family. One of Jeffrey’s relatives in Michigan made a stained glass sock monkey. Cute. I took my sock monkey duty seriously. Along the monkey went to North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado. Sock Monkey even stopped at Wall Drug for a glass of free ice water!
I liked the refrigerator door display in the new couple’s townhome. It’s in the photos. Lindsay loves the Beatles, for a very personal reason. I told her the Beatles were just hitting it big in the United States when her Dad was born in 1964.
Instead of the traditional unity candle, the couple used a natural theme, a young sapling, for that portion of the ceremony. The simple wedding cake followed the natural theme. A story teller told a marvelous story. At this wedding, good followed good followed good….
They recently closed on their townhome, and a criteria was that its cost be low enough so that it could be paid for if only one of the two were working. Good practical old-time kind of thinking.
Marriage is often viewed as a destination.
More accurately, I see it as the beginning of a trip along a road which is not always predictable.
I wish Lindsay and Jeffrey well.
From what I experienced last week, they’re off to a good start.
Congratulations and best wishes!
A pre-wedding post on the upcoming wedding is at the blog for May 31, 2010.

#195 – Dick Bernard: A Reflection as I prepare to travel to a wedding.

Have a good Memorial Day.
I press “send” and we leave suburban Denver and my oldest granddaughters wedding on Friday June 4.
All such events are significant. This wedding is far more so than most for me.
Lindsay’s grandma, my first wife, Barbara, died at University Hospital, Minneapolis, when her Dad, my son, was 1 1/2, July 24, 1965. She was essentially terminally ill (kidney disease) during our entire marriage of just over two years. She was only 22. Her need for a kidney transplant then is why I live in the twin cities today. She didn’t live long enough to get a kidney. Had she received the transplant and lived, she would have had to stay here as the possibility of organ rejection was monitored. In those years, they were doing transplants, but the process was very new, and done in only a few hospitals in the U.S. University Hospital was one of those few.
Time flies. This last week I’ve been out taking photographs of the places I/we used to live in this area. I’ll deliver them to my son and granddaughter in a few days.
Tom and my first home after Barbara died was at 1615 S. Ferry St. in Anoka, just a block from the Mississippi Bridge. It has always been there, just a small very old house alongside a very busy road. Sometime between my last visit and yesterday it was torn down and replaced by two houses set back behind a fence which probably serves a function as road noise barrier.
Properly, the address, 1615 S. Ferry St., which we knew as just another old house, was long past its prime, even then badly needing rehabilitation.
Nonetheless, for some reason you understand, I don’t look at it in quite the same way.
I wrote a short letter to Lindsay which I’ll give her when I get to Colorado. I suggest that she call up John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy” on YouTube. That’s the song with the lyric, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. Take your pick of versions.
We humans face a quandary every day: look to saving the future, obviously; but live as well as possible today, as well.
Life, indeed, is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.
But one is cautioned to not neglect or dismiss the future either…the generations which follow deserve our very serious attention to that as well.
That is a job, I have observed, that we do not do well….

#142 – Madeline Simon: A New Years Day Reflection

It’s New Year’s Day 2010, often a time for reflection, and I guess I am feeling a little “bloggy.” That’s not foggy or hung over, and no, I am not going to start a blog.
A couple of things I pondered today:
First, I thought of a couple of wonderful large black raspberries I ate last night which had been brought by someone at the party and included in a fruit mix. Normally, we are looking at or considering a lot of issues, which I don’t need to explain, about where food comes from and how, etc. I thought today about those raspberries and pictured the sunshine, the plant, its environment, and other things necessary for the raspberries to have grown. Throughout most of human history, including our country’s, and as an important part of my own personal history, people have always known where their food came from and most often they saw and raised and picked the product themselves.
As a child I picked berries on my grandfather’s North Dakota farm, and those berries we kids didn’t eat while picking were put in pint/quart containers and loaded into the transport box lift on the back of my grandfather’s small tractor and hauled to the small grocery store in the small town some few miles away.
I also recalled my experiences sitting on a fruit crate with my babushka riding on that lift behind the tractor into town.
New Years Eve, 2009, I didn’t know where those berries came from.
We do indeed live in a “Global Village.”
Second, I was talking recently with the gardener who does tree trimming in the winter about having seen a couple of young deer in my yard with antlers engaged in practice for the first time. He told me of two deer during rutting season who were found drowned with their antlers still stuck together.
I guess nature can also tell us that you might win the battle and still lose your life.
Happy, Healthy and Peaceful New Year!!!

#136 – Dick Bernard: The Bad Plus

UPDATE: The venue at which the Bad Plus is playing New Years Eve is the Village Vanguard in New York City. The National Public Radio program which will broadcast part of its performance, plus many others, including at the Dakota in Minneapolis, is apparently Toast of the Nation on December 31st. There is a very interesting history of the Village Vanguard at its website.
Truth be told, I’m no music expert. I just enjoy good music. And last night we made an excellent decision to see the Christmas show of the Jazz group, The Bad Plus, at the Dakota in downtown Minneapolis. They are three hugely talented musicians: David King, drums; Reid Anderson, bass; Ethan Iverson, piano.
They will be part of the headline group on National Public Radio’s New Years Eve live this coming Thursday night. They’ll be performing at a Manhattan club, their next gig.
You can see them perform here. They’re a hot international group.
As a matter of course, I don’t follow specific performers, or even specialize in any specific genre of music. I just like good music.
I’d never heard of The Bad Plus till last summer when I had the good fortune of being on a committee with Dwayne King, and in the course of conversation he mentioned his son, a drummer, who had this group, The Bad Plus. He was obviously proud of his son, and I looked them up. A couple of weeks ago Dwayne mentioned the gig at the Dakota, where they’ve done a Christmas concert for the last ten years (to an almost empty house the first year), so we “signed”.
Even with questionable weather last night, the Dakota, located on last nights near deserted Nicollet Mall, was near packed with fans, and the trio gave a great show.
The Bad Plus members are in the vicinity of 40, and in the Jazz world, 40 is almost an infant. Paying the dues is a long term process. The talent of the group is such, and their particular brand of jazz so unique, that they have caught on. Their staple is original compositions they’ve composed and perfected.
I mentioned their name at coffee yesterday morning to the daughter of a good friend who’s connected to the music biz in LA, and her eyes lit up.
There is talent, for certain, in performers like these. But any talent, not worked at, is only raw talent. Then there’s a matter of paying one’s dues – playing to almost empty houses; practicing; networking…it isn’t easy.
Sometimes it all comes together, and this is what is happening for three talented young men, two from suburban Minneapolis and the other from a small town in western Wisconsin.
If we stay awake long enough, we’ll catch them New Years Eve in New York!
Check them out on YouTube.

#135 – Dick Bernard: Dad's Shoes

Today is my Dad’s 102nd birthday (he passed away in 1997, not quite reaching 90.) He’s more on my mind than usual this year because, for the last several months, I’ve been trying to summarize 400 years of his French-Canadian ancestry in North America. I’m in the home stretch, now, thanks to many people. I’m calling the document “The First 300 Years”. It ends with Dad’s birth, December 22, 1907, in Grafton ND. It has been a fascinating, difficult, project. I’ll be glad when I can say I’ve finished it (probably in January.)

Josephine and Henry Bernard in 1908, with youngster Henry, and his sister Josie.

Josephine and Henry Bernard in 1908, with youngster Henry, and his sister Josie.


Dad was a tall man: he reached his adult height of 6’3″ about 8th grade – very unusual for those early days. His height gave him no particular advantage. He was a gangly kid, and he had big, flat feet – size 12 if I recall rightly. His nickname of “Boy” (when he was born the doctor said “it’s a boy”) stuck with him his entire life.
Dad’s big feet helped caused me a broken leg in 7th grade. He had a hand-me-down pair of racing skates – the ones with the very long blades – which were size 13. This particular day, at the schoolyard pond across the street from our house, I put on those huge skates, ended up on the end of “crack the whip” with a bunch of kids, fell, and broke my leg. It was my first experience with Dad’s shoes.
I got to thinking about Dad and his shoes a few days ago, when I took down his insulated walking boots from the shelf. I like to walk outdoors year around, and sometime back around Dad’s death, I “inherited” the walking shoes he used in the winter at Our Lady of the Snows, the place at which he lived his last ten years, in Belleville IL. I’m size 10 1/2, so his boots are a little large, but with heavier socks they fit just fine, and they’ll do me all winter. Unlike Dad, they haven’t “kicked the bucket” yet, and my guess is that they have more years left in them.
Here they are, a couple of days ago…
Bernard, Henry Shoes001
A few years ago, one Christmas, I gave each of my kids and the then-grandkids one pair each of my beat-up old shoes (I don’t easily throw stuff in the garbage!) I’m a couple of grandkids behind (this year they’ll get theirs – I’ve got two pair in mind!) The gift of the old shoes was, I admit, a bit on the odd side, but it was a gift.
On this day, Dad’s 102nd birthday, Dad’s Big Shoes come to mind. Whatever his good points, or deficiencies (like us all, he certainly wasn’t perfect), he cobbled me together, and then sent me on my merry way to practice, imperfectly, life.
I’d guess that every one of us, in one way or another, male or female, had similar Dad or Mom stories…about their Big Shoes and how they helped us grow to what we have become.
Doubtless my own kids have Dad stories about me.
I hope most of the stories are at least a tiny bit positive!
Happy Birthday, Dad, and Merry Christmas.

#134 – June Johnson: A 1940s Country School Christmas

NOTE: Each year I’m drawn to this essay, written in December, 1985, for the teacher union newsletter on Minnesota’s Iron Range. June Johnson was then a teacher at Bigfork High School.
CHIPS FROM THE NORTHERN BRANCH by June Johnson
From somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I have plucked a Christmas memory which will be forever important to me.
Christmas on the North Dakota prairie was a time of anticipation and joy, a welcome respite from the hard times and unrelenting toil of everyday existence. Families were extremely impoverished and no “store-bought” gifts were imminent for most of the children who attended Souris #1. Excitement filled the air as mothers baked once-a-year “goodies” and sewed and baked and built gifts to be opened on Christmas morning.
The Christmas program at school was a yearly social event for the entire community No special lights or decorations were needed to enhance the appreciation of this day. The kids had planned, practiced and revised every noon hour for a month and were ready. A tree fashioned from prairie junipers decorated with strings of popcorn and thorn apples, and various homemade decorations was in place and a few small packages were already under it.
All year I had tried to get Frederic, a reticent second grader, to talk to me. An unusually polite youngster, he always had his work done but spoke to no one if it could be avoided. After the program was over, gifts were distributed and I was singularly impressed with the ingenuity displayed in the homemade gifts which were given to me. Coffee, hot cocoa and cookies were now being enjoyed by all. At this point, I felt a tug at my sleeve and found Frederic looking up at me. As I knelt down, he quickly placed a package in my hand. While he looked on, I opened it and found a sling shot and a bag of smooth stones. As I held out my arms, he hesitated only a moment before coming to me. Then he said, “I made it for you because I love you.”
In my cedar chest (which holds all my “treasures”), I have a box which holds a sling shot, a bag of stones, and the memory of a very special little boy.

#132 – Dick Bernard: The Christmas Call, and an encore for Susan Boyle

Last night about 8 o’clock or so the phone rang. There was an irrepressible, unmistakable, voice on the other end.
It was Danny, calling to wish us a Merry Christmas.
Danny is one of those memorable characters one comes across once in awhile; people who brand themselves into our memory bank.
I met Danny during the last few months of my brother-in-law’s life in the summer and fall of 2007. Mike, more or less a recluse, mentally ill, and paralyzed from the waist down, moved into the assisted living facility where Danny lived, a high-rise in one of North Dakota’s few cities. Mike had only two or three months in the high rise before cancer took him back to the hospital, nursing home, and the release of death.
I think there would be consensus among the people that know him, including his fellow residents, that Danny is an odd duck. He was very short, and very round, he certainly wasn’t graceful in his movements, and he basically wore the same clothes every day, and they were not clothes that would win him any awards.
And he could be a pest. I think even his fellow residents tended to tire of him at times.
At first, I thought he might be mentally handicapped, and I suspect that in some ways he was, but that didn’t deter him. He was just fine with himself, thank you very much.
Mike died in early November, 2007, with few friends. He’d spent a life wary of relationships, generally.
It was Danny who called me up and said he wanted to arrange a memorial service at the high-rise for Mike, and I said OK, not thinking that he’d ever pull it off.
But near Thanksgiving in 2007, Danny MC’ed the most marvelous memorial service I’ve ever attended. He had a minister there, and he had a pianist, and he sang a couple of the hymns as solos. There were a goodly number of us in attendance. If Mike’s spirit were anywhere around, it had to feel very good.
And it was Danny’s gig.
The minister later told me later that he based a sermon on Danny’s service: that’s how impressed he was.
Recently Danny celebrated his 50th birthday. He invited us up, but we didn’t go. Now I wish we had.
There are special people who come into one’s life, and Danny is definitely one of those, for me. Last night, he and I talked for only a short while, bid each other Merry Christmas, and so it went.
And speaking of Special People: Last night I heard that Susan Boyle’s YouTube videos from last spring have now been seen over 100,000,000 times – the most popular video of the year (here). (My two earlier posts about her are here.)
Today I bought Susan’s first CD, and started listening to it. It is wonderful. Look for it. She, too, was viewed as something of an odd duck in her village years ago…. She too was irrepressible.
She and Danny have that certain something…something we can all aspire to.