Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Tapping on glass
The Strenuous Life
The practice of faith is especially tuned to the power of symbols. Think of the great art of the Renaissance or the temples and synagogues of the Middle Ages or the stained glass of 100-year-old Christian churches reflecting deeply tinted light. We see more than just three-dimensional objects and God-touched colors; we see the symbol as an open door to the truths of believing. Signs and symbols are not just for the religious, however.
Despite their importance, these signs don’t always come to us as something we easily recognize. Sometimes they come as whispers that only the soul can feel.
This year, spring break fell on the week before Holy Week, and I found myself in my office enjoying the quiet of silent phones. A deliveryman tapped on the glass office doors and brought in two packages, both addressed to me. One was in a simple lunch-sack brown covering and the other in a white cushioned envelope that crinkled as I handled it.
I opened the packages in the quiet of my office. The white envelope contained two copies of a self-published book with a long note in it. The book was a history of an Arkansas family with ties to Catholic High. Like most Southern families, the branches of its tree reached far and wide into the sky of history with names like Oswald, DuClos, Maus, and Berkemeyer featured prominently. As I read the note, I understood why the school received that book. It contained the biography of Jimmy Maus, a 1939 graduate of Catholic High who died in World War II when the aircraft carrier USS Liscome Bay was torpedoed. I turned the book’s blue binding over and over in my hands, feeling the weight of the boy’s death. I flipped to a few entries for a quick glance. It was fascinating.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the brown package awaiting me. I tore it open with a pair of scissors and found a framed piece encased in bubble wrap. After loosening the wrap, the face of a young man in a military uniform, Timothy Green, stared at me. The framed arrangement placed Green’s photo next to a charcoal scratch. The familiar gray charcoal rubbing outlined his name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Mr. Green graduated from Catholic High in 1966 and was killed in a helicopter crash in Vietnam in 1970.
I remembered a conversation I had with another graduate, Steve Johnson of Katy, Texas, last year. He told me a story about how, in seventh grade, he served as an altar boy at Mr. Green’s funeral. He wanted to honor Mr. Green with a plaque featuring the rubbing, and I told him I thought it was a great idea. Mr. Johnson said he would try to find members of Mr. Green’s family, but his efforts met a dead end time and again.
I sat in my office looking at both the book and the plaque on my desk. The book was a fabric that held a family’s history together. The plaque was a bridge that connected the promise of youth to the power of service.
The day after Palm Sunday, I addressed the students in my school on the closed-circuit TV morning announcements. After the usual litany of athletic events, club meetings, and students needed in various parts of the school, the students heard the meaning of Holy Week underscored. Holy Week is about sacrifice and redemption. It’s about the power that comes from facing desperate challenges and prevailing in the end.
Holding up the book, I told the story of Jimmy Maus and his sacrifice on that aircraft carrier. Holding up the plaque, I told the story of Timothy Green and his sacrifice in Vietnam. The boys understood the redemptive aspects of the afterlife but—in the innocence of their teenage minds—they also heard something unmistakable: Jimmy’s name and Timothy’s name spoken in the halls of the high school they attended decades before. Though long gone, the echo of their names reverberated off tin lockers and laminate desktops. To a boy, his own name is magical; it’s the incantation that gets his attention every time. To hear the names of these graduates was a tribute that even the most distracted boy understood.
Don’t we all look for signs? Whether religious or not, don’t we all feel our breath taken away when the symbolic becomes obvious? This is our human condition, it is part of our perfect creation to feel, to emote, to understand beyond what we see. Yes, our faith traditions overflow with symbols and signs, but so do our secular lives in our work, our families. If we take just a moment, just one single instant to allow our souls to fully acknowledge what our eyes see, we understand the genuine aspects of hope.
As I finished the announcements and started to gather the book and plaque, a boy on the school broadcast crew stepped forward. He walked over to the announcement desk and tapped the glass on the framed picture of Timothy Green and looked at me. He said, “That’s my great-uncle. I’m wearing his necklace right now.” Pulling a silver chain from under his shirt, he held it aloft between his thumb and forefinger. “My mom helped my great-grandmother clean out her house and found a box with his name on it. The box had all his medals and personal stuff in it. My mom thought I’d like to wear his necklace. She thought I’d understand what it meant.”
In an instant, we choose whether to feel a whisper and acknowledge its presence or let it pass unnoticed, mixing it with the larger wind that blows through busy lives. Whispers come to us in so many ways. We see a breeze lift leaves in a tree. We feel the warmth of sun inch across our open hands. We hear tapping on glass.
If we allow it, our souls decipher the lyrics of our senses.