You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January 2006.
While picking through stuff the other day, my sister and I came across something very odd. It was an icon of sorts, although very western in appearance. It shows a young boy, tousled hair surrounded by a halo, who points with his left hand at himself, and with his right hand toward the heavens. We guessed, without any real basis for it, that the boy was supposed to be the young Christ. We had never seen it before, and it was not at all the kind of thing you might expect to find in an adventist household in the 1950s and 60s. I’ll try to scan it later, for the edification of all.
It struck my sister and I as very funny. I should explain that when we were growing up, Dee thought it very important, as the eldest child, to keep order among us kids. This led to the occasional scuffle, where she would wield her fingernails to enforce her iron will.
Back to the icon thingie. Dee’s first reaction was to say that it looked like me. It did, sort of, in a vague kind of way.
“It is me,” I told her. “Its a totally candid shot. I remember when it was taken.”
She snickered. “Do tell.”
“Sure,” I replied. “As you can see, the picture was taken as I was reporting the facts about your behavior. You can see that I’m pointing at myself, and saying ‘Dee hit me.’”
“Uh huh,” she said. “Not that I ever in my life hit you, but why are you pointing up with the other hand?”
“That’s easy,” I said. “I’m telling them that you are upstairs. I thought they might want to know.”
It struck us both as insanely funny, although that still doesn’t explain (to me anyway) why she hauled off and hit me again. She really did. And Dad, if you’re reading this, she’s in Atlanta. In case you want to say something to her.
It has been a fairly grueling 24 hours or so. My father, the California expatriate, is back in town with his new wife. My brother has been living in my father’s old house, and his own wedding is scheduled for later this year. After the ceremony, the new couple will take up housekeeping in the place. That meant that my father had to clear his stuff out, and by extension, that meant it was also time for us three kids to sort through my mother’s stuff. Orders were issued, plans were made, and I, along with my brother and sister, convened and set to it last night.
My mother died just before the turn of the millenium, a circumstance which caused us to label her as non-Y2k compliant. She died of complications from Alzheimers disease, which turned an intelligent and inquisitive woman into an angry child. It was not pretty, and caring for her came close to killing my father. Even now, the house where my brother now resides exudes an aura of sadness and despair, at least to me. After she reposed, we did not try to sort through the property. It was our father’s house, and we were more than happy to leave his home un-ransacked.
Now we had no choice. We were all sensitive, I think, to how ugly such affairs can turn, as children battle over china and silver. In the end, we were too retiring. All three of us kids are reserved, and when we started we simply stood, staring at the collection of stuff, silent.
“Why don’t you start,” one of us said. “Go ahead and pick something.”
“No,” was the reply, “I’ll let you start.”
We carried on like that for a half hour or so, and finally realized we had to get serious. We started picking things up and talking.
There was china, and crystal and silver. Those were not the things that drew our attention. Instead, we were drawn to small, dusty items of indeterminate age and origin. Little boxes, bottles, lamps…things that we remembered from when we were small, when as little children we would stop our ceaseless activity to gaze up over our heads at things on tables and shelves. Some were things that my mother told us stories about, others were things that were on her dresser,that we remembered from mornings spent sprawled on our parents’ bed as they got ready to go to work. I was entranced to see an ancient and tattered leather pencil case that was always kept with her crossword puzzles, which she worked incessantly. Tentatively, we started :
“Would anyone mind if I took that?”
“Oh, look at this. You should really take that.”
“Would it be ok…?”
The more valuable stuff was pretty perfunctory. It was the odds and ends, the things which we could imagine still carried a scent, a fleeting touch — that was what drew us.
It was, I think, pretty painful for all of us. In fact, we could not quite muster the fortitude to sit down with the photo albums and photographs. Those will have to wait for another time. Weak as we are, what we did carried us to the limits of our emotional endurance. It was a relief when the time came when my sister had to return to Atlanta. We adjourned, and we’ll spend some time recuperating before we try to finish up.
It makes me wonder what my own kids will have to struggle through, and what will be important. I doubt my mother would have guessed what things the three of us were drawn to. While we are alive, we catalogue our treasures as we value them. We may put things like silver and crystal, jewelry and furniture at the top of our list. Maybe our catalog is skewed. What I have learned last night and today is that it is those things that evoke within us memories and sights and sounds, smells and touch, that resonate with us longer. It may be that we cannot imagine while we are alive what our children will pick up and caress, and cry out “Do you remember…?”, after we are gone and in our grave.
After all of that whining yesterday, it should not come as a surprise that upon awakening this morning I would find a revelation — yea, a veritable epiphany — in today’s New York Times. My troubles are over.
Briefly, the story revealed that in China, busy billionaires (worth some $125 million in US money) are hiring a Shanghai lawyer to find young virgins for said billionaires to marry. The lawyer, He Xin, proudly told the Times that he was the world’s first lifestyle lawyer. He has obtained wives for three billionaires, and has some 47 others in the queue. And, apparently, there is not a serious shortage of comely applicants for the wifely spot.
Enter the world’s second lifestyle lawyer: Seraphim — lifestyle lawyer for the occidental. I have, of course, notified all of my existing clients to come pick up their files, and instructed my secretary on who I will see henceforth.
“As far as guys go,” I told her, “we will need a balance sheet verified by a CPA. There must be a net worth of at least $125 million dollars. If someone with less than that wants to see me, tell them to go work another few years and call me when they are really wealthy. We’ll have no pikers here.”
“Uh, sure,” she said, giving me that special look of respect that consists of rolling her eyes toward the ceiling.
“As for women, keep in mind they must be young, beautiful and virgins,” I instructed.
“Since when did you start seeing ten year olds?” she asked. I thought that was unreasonably pessimistic, maybe even snarky. I was mildly irritated.
“Look,” I said. “We are on the cutting edge of a new field of law. Either get with the program or go work for one of those other lawyers. There’s no looking back.”
She gave me the look of respect again. Firmness works wonders.
So I’m sitting here, excitedly waiting for the phone to ring. For my readers, among whom are found numberless billionaires and lithesome young virgins, I will cut you some slack on my fees, so feel free to write me. That’s Seraphim, Lifestyle Lawyer. You won’t be sorry.
In the paper today came news that this very day — January 23 — is officially the gloomiest day of the year. It’s a scientific fact, as you can see by the clearly scientific formula above. For those who are not intuitive in a scientific way, the variables are as follows: (W)eather, (Debt), (d) monthly salary, (T)ime since Christmas, time since failure to (Q)uit a bad habit, low (M)otivational levels and (NA) the need to take action.
I knew it was something.
Clearly, I have not been my usual perky self lately. Its times like these that I feel the need for my very own Jeeves, who will bring me the life-giving tea in the morning, and pack my bags for that needed trip to France. Rather than blame it on weather and debt, however, I prefer to blame it on general irritability and bad career choices. Which brings me to what finally brought me out of my funk this evening, an e-mail from a thoughtful reader, who in real life is a law student. (Of course, on balance, my readers are always more thoughtful than me.) How, he asked, do you reconcile your work in family law with being an Orthodox Christian.
Ouch.
I hope he doesn’t mind, but just in an effort to break the “I don’t care anymore” logjam, here is my reply. You’ll note that I do not try to justify my work on the grounds of Christian virtue:
“Its interesting that your note came today. All day I was dragging around, seeing people and getting ready for a term of court next week, and desperately wishing I was doing something ~ anything ~ else. The questions you ask are ones I ask daily. I don’t know that I have a good answer, but I’ll tell you what comes to mind:
I’ll start by saying that when I first became involved in family law, I was not a Christian of any description. If anything, I was virulently anti-Christian, although I had the usual mild inclinations toward common decency. By the time I became a Christian, family law was the bulk of my practice, and that continues to the present day. Having become a Christian, I tried various strategies to justify my work. I went through a phase where I tried to pre-judge the case, as it were, so I could represent only those I saw as the aggrieved spouse. That didn’t last long. I quickly discovered that the woman sobbing across the desk was having an affair, that the pained looking man had a closet full of pornography — that there was never a case where there was not sufficient bad behavior to involve all of the parties, and usually their friends and in-laws as well. So I gave up looking for virtuous people to represent (although there are some out there), and started rationalizing that the victims of divorce are the modern day equivalents of the Biblical widows and orphans.
That didn’t go far either.
It was an uncomfortable spot. It didn’t seem right, yet it was what I did. To change my practice would be the equivalent of changing careers, and with a family to support I was too chicken to do it. Then I realized that the problem was more systemic than simply a biblical critique of divorce. It started when I developed — pretty much off the top of my head — during coffee with a judge that the reason people flamed out in the family law area was because they were unable to manage anger; that the mark of a good family lawyer was not exceptional knowledge or Perry Mason litigation skills, but the ability to swim in and deal with the sea of anger and hurt which inundates family courts. The judge looked surprised, but after a few minutes nodded in agreement. I hear he’s speaking on the theme these days. That caused me to realize something more though: all of law — every nook and cranny, every specialty — was simply a way of channeling passions into socially acceptable stream beds. Pride, lust, greed, covetousness…you name it. I sincerely believe that there is no area of practice that does not involve helping people exercise (or exorcise) their passions. Contracts? Pride and greed. Real property? Acquisitiveness and covetousness. Torts? Well — that goes without saying, whether you work for the plaintiff or the defense. I know that is an awfully pessimistic, overly black and white view of the picture, but there you have it. I’ll be the first to say that the alternative is pretty gruesome to think about, but in my mind the whole profession is steeped in the same turbulent atmosphere.
So, I find myself doing what I have pretty much always done. I try not to file a lawsuit unless it appears absolutely necessary, I urge my clients to reconcile — back into the marriage if possible, but if not at least to make peace with one another, I urge forgiveness, and I try to encourage people to keep their pants on for at least the first weeks or months of the separation. I don’t always succeed in keeping my own passions under control, so I can’t claim any real overarching success. All of that is a pretty poor rationalization for what I do, but in the end, it is all I can offer.
Do I feel like that takes care of the spiritual problem? Not at all. I worry about it, a lot. Every week I intone the litany that prays for a good defense before the dread judgment seat of God. It scares me. The only thing I can possibly say is that I tried to encourage my people to be decent, that I tried to inject a Christian witness into a brutal arena. Even I know it is a poor excuse. My only hope for a good outcome before the judgment seat is the mercy of God, but I have a feeling that would be true no matter what I was doing. At bottom, I’m just a pretty sinful guy, and I think that is a bigger problem than the arena I work in. I hope that makes sense.
Sorry to be so glum. Sometimes I wish I had known these things, during the time that I was trying to decide what to do. On the one hand, I would not have become a lawyer! There was a reason so many saints left the profession. I think I would have gone directly to seminary — even now, my job is just what I do to pass the time between liturgies and trips to Johnstown. On the other hand, I suspect that I would still be struggling with the same passions that trip me up every day now.
Anyway…in the end, I do not think that Christians need to abandon law any more than we need to abandon accounting or psychology or sales. A Christian can do great good in the family law arena. But in order for the field not to eat your soul, I really think you have to have a high tolerance for dealing with the pain and anger of others.”
Tomorrow…the journey away from whining begins!
Ancient Church 