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4/7/24

The Case for Re-defining the Meaning of a Strong Person

 By Robert R. Schwarz

(originally posted September 21, 2014)


When I am weak, then I am strong

( The Apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians, 12:10 )


God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong 

( 1 Corinthians , 1: 27 )


If we should ever feel burdened by the knowledge

of our weakness…let us remember what the Lord

told St. Paul during his time of trial: My graces

is sufficient, for my power is made perfect

 in weakness .

( from Conversations with God by Francis Fernandez)


    Many years ago I was saddened and also   dismayed by the death of two

friends whom I had considered paragons of human strength: emotional, physical,

intellectual. As a journalist, their deaths left me with a need to know why our society

appears confused about the core of human strength. Should we call a man or a woman 

" strong" when they excel in many physical feats; and label them "weak" and when we have witnessed

 them again and again over a lifetime behaved with

uncontrollable moral weakness?

     I wrote this several years ago and have chosen, for various reasons,  not to edit it as I inclined

recently to do. 

    I  began to probe the question about strong humans by recalling those thousands  of   men and

women  who, despite the brutal clubbing  and  lunges of police dogs,  stayed the

course of their freedom march in Selma, Alabama; and  of  the thousands  marching

in 1930 in India despite being savagely beaten by soldiers determined to stop a

nation-wide protest against a British imposed harsh tax on simple salt.  And then I

read the Wall Street Journal describing the U.S. Navy's SEALS fighting a battle a few decades ago  in

 the Middle East. It quoted   Lt. Cmdr. Eric Greitens, himself, a SEAL   in the U.S. Navy Reserve: 

 "Almost all the men who survived possessed one common quality;. Even in great pain they remained 

 firm and  steadfast.  They also had a heart large enough to dedicate themselves to a higher purpose. " 


    I  understood the essence  of human strength  better when I reflected on  the lives of three friends: a

corporate vice president, a psychiatrist, and a department store clerk. ( I have changed

some names ). 


                                                                 ***


    Dillon  was a college varsity wrestler and cross-country runner who later wore

captain bars  as a U.S. Infantry paratrooper during the Korean Conflict. He married a

smart, classy  woman who lovingly  bore him three children and saw that they were

raised on a good old fashioned regimen of American morality, work ethics, and

patriotism.  Dillon  became vice president  for an international  consulting company,

managing several hundred employees. 

   According to Dillon, drinking with the boys  was part of the job. "You find out

what the competition is doing at the hotel bar," he once told me. He could come home

at 3 a.m., fall asleep on the living room floor  watching television, then rise  at 6:30

a.m. with  full steam for work.  "Dillon has amazing recuperative powers," his wife

would say.  But after twenty-five years of riding the corporate  high, Dillon's powers

were not recharging so quickly. There had been a lot of nights with the boys at hotel

bars. "I can stop drinking anytime I want, "he explained in a huff  to his wife after

walking out of his first—and last— Alcoholic Anonymous meeting.

  One afternoon,   Dillon, his wife and I were sitting in my home making

arrangements for a mutual friend's  funeral.  I knew of  the reoccurring troubles Dillon's

 drinking had brought to his work and family life. I turned to him and, as if asking

an academic question, and  said , " Dillon. would you sacrifice anything  for the love of your

wife? " He thought for a moment before realizing he was being confronted  with something 

very important. "Oh," he said,  dismissing  my question as unworthy of any 

thought,  "you mean the drinking." He said no more, and, unfortunately, neither did

his wife nor I .  But the point had been made: Though you love your wife

dearly, Dillon, do you have the courage, the guts to do something extremely vital to

your family's happiness?  

     A couple of years later, Dillon, now separated from his wife and drinking a tumbler

of vodka before noon, sat down one day, I truly believed,  to assess  his situation.  The 

mind that once provided leadership for cadres of managers and also handled  the self-

sacrificing  logistics of raising two daughters and a son,  was believing, I surmised now, 

that  things could be better. But really, it's not all that bad. Right?  

      With that, he now tried to rise from his chair but couldn't. The legs which at college could

race  three miles in less than 15 minutes and which later could seize the  ground after a

parachute  drop from ten thousand feet up,   had suddenly become paralyzed.  Dillon

died a few weeks later.  God loved  him, I believed. 


                                                       ***


 My other friend  was a psychiatrist  whom I met in an interview for a series I

was writing about a mental health center.  Dr. Rudy Sunburg was 42, a tall, balding,

cigar-smoking, humor-witted, North Carolina  boy with  an  I-like-people  personality.

Rudy's  hearty  laugh  compensated for the barely tolerable  puns  he told to staff , 

family and  patients.  

     Everyone wanted to claim friendship with Rudy.   He was a fun-loving

father to a Mexican-born  boy whom  he and his wife had adopted soon after Rudy  had left

a  successful general practice for psychiatry.  We and our wives  bonded  during the

years Rudy and I served on  the board of a county  mental health association.

My wife and I often visited  Rudy in his home and learned he  was  an

atheist who actually carried this ID in his wallet.  This fact never seemed to bother his

colleagues or patients, that is until  Rudy was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer.

    Pain  now  forced him to sleep  in  a hardback chair at night, facing the back of the

chair and resting  his head on  folded  arms.  A few days before  Rudy was

hospitalized,  I looked for an opening to  say what I knew must be said to a good

friend.  I  waded in with:  "Rudy, what if you are wrong about God and everything about Him.  At

least cover your bases and—" .  I didn't know what  to say next. In those days I could not

articulate the Christian faith very well nor had yet embraced it, .  But Rudy gave me his  full attention 

 but did not go beyond  polite smiling . 

     The next week I visited Rudy at a Chicago hospital.  Still the atheist,  Rudy

 joked about the morphine which had constipated him so severely that it required a

nurse—a friend of his— to  give him relief by her hand.   A Jewish lady chaplain entered,

and we all made witty remarks.   Though  Rudy  was expected to fight off

his foe for several more weeks, he died suddenly the next day.


     Later, I couldn't help but ask myself: Had my friend died with at least one 

thought of God and His omnipresence, His omniscience, His omnipotence?    Had my

friend,  before his final darkness, had he any thought of a heaven, that maybe, just

maybe  his atheism had tragically failed him ? Or did my friend, with his disciplined empirical

certitude,  believe he was facing the absolute end of himself —forever? If so and if he

saw his very  last days of any existence   as a nothing but unceasing  pain with a mind spinning in  a

 cloud of morphine? I dreaded to know the truth. I learned that the day after  I left his room, this 

 wonderful psychiatrist, as he had been doing since his arrival here, wrote a prescription for himself and  then   handed it to his obedient nurse friend. 


Then Came Philip: A Rare Breed


  The few who regularly interacted with Philip saw him as a  private,  gentle, 

and meek-spirited man who rarely asserted himself, and when he had to, it was with

utter calm and absence of any guile. I found it interesting that my friend would rather

face  the occasional hoard of grasping customers at the department store which

employed him  than  the give-and-take of a common   human  relationship. Other than an

occasional wish to be a few inches taller than his five-feet-five inches,  his ambitions

were to be an honest and a diligent salesperson in his furniture section ; and to retain a

sane and  secure lifestyle that allowed him frugality and simplicity.  

 Yet Philip's speaking voice belied his appearance, and you might assume it

sounded like a radio  announcer or a corporate CEO, for it had a mellow timbre that

resonated self-control and perfect diction. Though you had never interacted with this man , you'd be

 willing to risk an opinion that this man was kind and  trustworthy--and you'd be right. . His 

 face hardly ever showed  any trace of interior conflict. 

            Philip was a college graduate and had majored in business administration.

Except for the 20 years of  the  live-in companionship he had given without fault

 to  his widowed mother,  Philip had   lived the rest of his life alone as a bachelor in a studio

apartment in Arlington Heights,  Illinois.  According to his sister (whom I knew

before her death), Philip never dated except for a girl he took to his high school prom. 

    As best I know,   Philip had no psychological hang-ups,  nor did he ever appear  to

have any passions, disordered or otherwise; this,  however, would  belie  his enormous

empathy for other people's suffering. Once, while relating to me an incident at his

neighborhood supermarket when a runaway car  struck and killed a teenage girl,

Philip's eyes were wet with tears.  

    Though he had a low discomfort threshold for crowds,  he  enjoyed nothing more than using his

 innate and low-key salesmanship skills to please a customer. I always had the notion that the counter

 which separated Philip from his customers  served as a sort of shield that emboldened him  to come

closer to people in a spirit of friendship. 

            I believe that  Philip,  whom I  had known off and on  since boyhood days, was

a moral  man in all respects. Except for the one time my wife and I took Philip to

a church Christmas pageant, I never knew  Philip to attend a church service. He   

could not  emotionally tolerate all the human intimacy of  any church service. " I just can't," 

 he once confided to me with regret. Yet  he always took his turn  at prayer at our weekly coffee and       

 donut meetings. 

   When Philip was a teenager, his  father died of a rare blood  ailment while the

family was vacationing  in northern Wisconsin.   For months  the tragedy traumatized Philip.

This incident and that of witnessing a lightning bolt kill three soldiers

marching closely behind him during his Army basic training caused him

for all time to be exceptionally prudent about anything or anyone that

could  possibly diminish his health or his modest bank account.


 Typical Day  for Philip       


         I well knew my friend's typical day, which for decades never lost its routine. 

Philip is up at 5 a.m.  and puts on one of  two  suits, a white shirt, and  one of his 

four  neckties (each was a past Christmas  present  from a niece and or his  sister in

Minnesota).  His breakfast is a muffin—usually blueberry—and a cup of

decaffeinated instant coffee. Philip  has an aversion to cooking his own

meals—it has something to do with a memory of his   army chow and  KP duty.    He takes 

many of his dinners at a McDonald's. A physician would tell him years later that his 

meal regimen likely had contributed to his two  heart attacks.  

   Before leaving for work, he gives a worried   thought to the fragile  health of

his octogenarian sister or  the expected cost of a brake job for his 14-year-old Chevy 

or, and  most troublesome, the kind of person his soon-to be-hired new boss might  be.

It perturbed Philip, he had  told me when he was  76,  not to know if he'd  be up to the

challenge of again  having to adjust to a possible quirk in a new boss's  management

style.  

            Philip now  descends two  flights of stairs. He drives his car out of a small 

parking lot across the street and, in ten minutes, arrives at his  department store.

Because his car once didn't start and he had to take a taxi to work, Bruce always arrives at

the shopping center 90 minutes  early and  sits in the car until the employee entrance 

opens.  

            It  is a large and busy store, part of a national  chain.   Top management has

been continually cutting back hours for  full-time employees or  firing  them upon the

slightest infraction of company rules and then replacing these people with  part-time

employees who, of course, work without medical benefits and whose hours are

  changed  mercurially  from week to week to conform to  cash flow demands.  Loyal,

hardworking veteran employees like Philip are shown no favoritism, Philip explained

after I had  prodded him to divulge a few company secrets. 

     A year ago,  a new manager lost patience with Philip for not meeting a

 daily quota of company credit card  applications. Philip  was downgraded.

 "I just couldn't pressure people to sign up for a credit card  when I sensed

they really didn't want it, Philip told me.  The downgrade  stung Philip,

but he did not protest and  continued to give his best. 

  The change in his job description now had him unwrapping and carting   sofas

and armchairs and stocking shelves.  All this physical work was obviously meant to

force Philip to quit. It  was taking its toll on Philip, now  walking slower.  

            Philip after work  heads for dinner,  sometimes to his favorite  shopping center

café for a dinner of  pasta ( his favorite )  or one of those hot pork sandwiches on

white bread smothered with canned gravy and a side of  instant mashed potatoes .

Then it's  home to his apartment—which no one has ever seen, except his sister when

she helped him move in and showed him how the hideaway bed worked. For several

months he has  entered by the building's   backdoor to avoid  encountering a demented

tenant  who, for no apparent reason, hurls  insults at Philip when   their paths cross, like : 

"Come on, Shorty, look alive!". 

            Once  home,  Philip does not leave his apartment until morning. Before going

to bed, he'll watch a Public Television documentary or a  library-borrowed movie 

from the 1940s.  On any of  his two days off, Phillip  might spend a few hours

reading the Wall Street Journal at the library  or taking the train (once a month ) to

the Chicago Loop to  have  a corn beef-on-rye   sandwich at a German restaurant,  one

of the very few luxuries he allows himself.  Twice, maybe three times a year, he'll 

have lunch  with an aging tailor  friend. Philip's wardrobe for these off days consists

of no more than two plaid shirts (washed but never ironed ) and  one pair of aged,

slightly baggy pants with cuffs rolled up about  three inches.  


More Coffee, Nostalgia, and Shoplifters


            When Philip's sister died, he  made a two-day trip to Minnesota  for the

services.  I telephoned him the  day of his return:  "Let's meet at meet at Caribou for coffee, " I 

 suggested. "  It was his favorite place; with its fireplace and knotty pine walls,  it reminded

him of that Wisconsin  resort where Philip and family would often vacation and  fish.  Central in his

 memory was that of the convivial   resort owner of Chippewa descent. 

            As usual, Philip insisted I choose where to sit. I reminded him that it was his

turn to pray.    His prayer was brief, sincerely expressing gratitude for life itself and 

asking blessings for my wife. He ended  it with " we pray in His name ." I wondered

why he had made  no reference to his sister, whose death I knew had deeply saddened 

him. "I wasn't even warned!" he had once   told me tearfully. 

       Our meal conversation eventually turned to old Hollywood movies and

actors like his favorite,  Cary Grant.  We talked about how the prices of new cars  had

soared since the 50s, and  finally,  about the very rich and famous  and how  they

unwisely or wisely spend  their money—and how they died. This last topic prompted 

Philip to relate  the time he found $l4,000 at  work. It was in a pouch  on the floor,

dropped accidentally by  a cashier rushing to the security office. "It was anyone who

wanted it,"   Philip said and frowned, still irritated at the cashier's clumsiness.    "No

one was in sight at the time, and the cashier would never recall where she had  dropped

it. When I turned it in to  security, they grabbed the pouch  from me and  gave me a

queer look." I think they might have said 'thank you'  ." 

  

  Our conversation continued...Philip always has a complaint  about the  boldness

of shoplifters. This time it was a thin woman who, before she was caught, had  walked

out of a dressing room   wearing two layers of stolen dresses concealed under her own

dress. And  there were  customers who switched their own shoes with those in a 

shoe box.  Philip, who once sold shoes in the store, found this disgusting.  When the

topic of charity came up, My friend, laying aside a large chocolate cookie on our restaurant table, said

 "when we at the store give change back to a customer , we suggest they consider dropping just  a  little

 of it  into  this box  here to help our  veterans, Some  ignore this and make the lamest excuses ." Philip

 rattled off the excuses. 

              Philip  leaned back and  relaxed while we drank our coffee in silence. I became impatient with

 his comfort in our silence, and  so I probed, perhaps unkindly.  "Anything ever upset  you, Philip? I

 mean,  do you ever think about  heaven or hell? " 

    He sensed the edge to my voice and replied , "Look, I don't know much about where I'm 

going when I die. I'm just concerned about all the tragedy now in  the

world." I sensed he said this with such a heavy  heart that I was embarrassed  for asking the question. 

After another long pause, Philip again surprised me with his question:  "Ever wonder why God allows 

 good people to suffer?" Likely ,he   was  thinking about the death of his  sister .        

   "I really know," I answered, and added, " maybe for a greater good ? " I don't  think either of us were

 satisfied with that. I sipped more coffee,


            A few days later,  my wife and I had  Philip over for dinner. He was totally

refreshed as only a night  of  deep, good sleep can do for a human .  My wife

Mary Alice asked him how his new boss was treating him. 

            Flashing a smile that lingered several seconds, Phillip  quickly replied: "Well, 

her name is Doris,  and she's  maybe twenty-eight. A little assertive and doesn’t know how

to say no  to her employees or 'would you mind doing this? ' But then she's   under a lot of pressure to

 turn things around in our department.."  Bruce  always find some good  in anyone, no matter how they

 treated him. Over dessert, he had a lot more to say about Doris. 

     "Listen to this now," he went on. "I come to work early one morning, set

things up in  the stock room before I clock in. I didn't know there had been a

mistake in the shift schedule and that I wasn't  suppose to work  that day. My

new boss comes in, sees me,  and says she  is s really sorry for the mix-up and

gives me a big hug. Can you imagine.  Then she says, "I'm  going make it

up to you with five  extra hours of work for you  next week. "

       I clapped. My  wife, happy,  smiled at Philip.

     After dinner, we escorted Philip to the front porch.  I watched him walk

into the night towards his parked car. "He's  wearing that same old  shirt, " I

murmured  to my wife. "Be quiet." she told me. 

    Philip's  moved slower than ever, his back  now  slightly  hunched and

his arms dangling rather than swinging at his side.  How ever do  his kind

manage to  survive?  I thought. Yet,   I admitted--though  halfheartedly--  there was

something to envy about my friend. 


Old Store Clerks Don't  Retire; They Just Get Forced Out

  Somewhere in the late 1990s, Philip's  department store became more

aggressive in replacing full-time workers with part-time people  (without

medical benefits ) and  whose hours  managers  could now  easily  manipulate

solely for company advantage. In Philip's eyes,   the employee   turnover was

dizzying and shameful.  Especially targeted were employees of Philip's

age—he now was 75—and who had years ago opted to take a  small cash

payout instead of a pension. All pensions were soon  eliminated.  Bruce told me  that "the employee

 who complains too  much finds his hours are drastically cut or they find some excuse to fire him. "

    Philip, whose hours had been cut to under 20 per week,  now had  worked several years 

years without a raise.  When he told me that, I shouted:   " What ?" .  


    His   45 years here as a shoe, then  furniture salesman,   had earned him  a reputation

of unquestionable honesty and company  loyalty.  Yet, stupidly and

unethically, his  company, with its often draconian rules, was doing its best to

discourage  loyalty and work diligence among its  500-plus store employees.

Nevertheless, Philip remained steadfast to his code of conduct.  When I asked him

why he just didn't quit, he said he couldn't  afford to. But there was another, more

entrenched reason. I knew  that Philip through the years had bonded with his work

environment and  a  predictable and work-satisfying  workday.  All this, along with

friendship with  a handful of coworkers,  had  become his true home.  He embraced it for

better or  worse. 

     Near the end of 2011, Philip' s work hours were cut to five. One day a week he

climbed a tall  inventory ladder to stock shoe boxes; it  gave him  back pain. On Jan

26, 2012 Philip quit.  What really pushed him over the edge, I believe,  was the

depression he had  felt  for two days after his young, ambitious, and most likely

insecure  female boss had inexplicably shouted  at him. It had occurred at least twice,

each time at the end of the day when Philip, as a voluntary gesture, began  working

beyond his quitting time to tidy up some inventory. He told me "She'd start yelling at me: What

are you hanging around here for?! …All I could do, Bob, was stand there and look at

her. "

   "What are you going to do now?"  I asked.  

    " I don't  know.  For now, I'm just enjoying being free of her."

      Philip's boss  was one of those humans—so I conjectured—who  are repelled

by what they perceive as  inexcusable weaknesses  in people. With some alarm they

 sense—but find it impossible to admit—that this weakness is coiled in themselves.

The mere thought of ever becoming in the least like a Philip—despite any virtue that

this weakness might give them —threatens to shatter their self-esteem.

   The more I reflected on what Philip continued to tell me, the better I 

understood my own frailties and  saw why some "strong" individuals dread and even

hate being in the company of people like Philip. . I think of  think of Holy  Scripture's words about 

 the many who hated Jesus because His goodness was a daily reminder of their badness. 


     A week or two later, the head store manager and a few co-workers arranged a

retirement  occasion for Philip in the cafeteria. There was no wrist watch or severance

pay. But there were from Philip's friends  warm goodbyes . There also was coffee and two strawberry cakes.                                                                 

                                                        It Couldn't Get Any Worse


   When Philip told me he no longer could afford his $650 a month apartment

rent, his continual   tribulation finally exasperated me. 

      "But Philip,  you did see  this day coming, didn't you?! And you didn't  save for it?!  Or

look for a different job years ago?! "

   Philip  looked at me with  that calm and collected expression which again

signaled  I was about to learn something.

    " There was no money to save," he simply said.   "And I told you before , I tried

looking for work years ago, but I guess I was too old  even then."

            With the  help of a niece who lived in Chicago,  Philip moved into a

nearby, low-cost retirement home.  His Social Security check was surrendered each

month to the home; he was allowed to keep $100 of it.   His room was very small; it

had a bed, microwave and a small  television set. Several old and faded black and

white family  photos were tacked on the wall or in frames on a small desk.  A black

and white framed  etching of Jesus  was on a bedside table.

     One morning, a few months after Philip  had moved into the home, he was walking

out to his 16-year-old  Chevy  when he began losing breath.  The home manager called a

doctor, and he was admitted to ICU at Northwest Community hospital. His heart,

which had several years ago  required an angioplasty, was now pumping blood with

only 15 percent efficiency.  Doctors implanted a pacemaker and a defibrillator into Bruce.

            Philip recovered, and within a few weeks we were again meeting for coffee. 

Heeding his doctor's advice,  Philip refused to ever drive again. For five months his

car remained with four flat tires in the parking  lot, until  a mechanic gave him  $500

for it. Other than the death of his parents and sister, I don't believe my friend was ever

more saddened as upon surrender of   his car , his  last vestige of independence,  he

claimed.

            For two weeks  Philip declined to see me. "I've got a cough, and I don't want

to give it to you." he told me on the phone. It was a typical and  selfless consideration of his. Philip did

 his best not to get too close to people with  whom he took his meals.  One  lady whom  he sat next to,

however, had undetected pneumonia .  Philip contacted it and was again back in the

hospital. There  doctors discovered he had an abdominal hernia , but they  could not

operate because of his past heart implants. Instead, Philip was put on a diet of

pureed  food. He hated all of it.

            I visited  Philip weekly at his rehab center, where he lost so much weight that

his clothes took on a clownish appearance. At first he was in a wheelchair, then

shuffled along the hallways  on a walker. His nights were practically sleepless because

his  partially demented roommate would wake up  screaming during the night. " For

heaven's sake," I told Philip, "try at least to talk to your roommate about it, talk to the

staff.." Philip said he did not want to cause any more discomfort to  his roommate. 

Nothing in his voice hinted he was or wanted to be  a  martyr.. Were I to

remonstrate with him for  what I thought was  excessive  charity,  I knew his reasons

for it would be embarrassingly superior to my advice that he  assert himself.  He was

too much of some kind of earth-bound angel to hold stock in the cliché the squeaky wheel gets oiled .


            Philip  slid into a deep depression; his face became grayish, he walked slower,

talked less and less, and often  took a full minute or longer to make a reply during our

conversations. When he did, it was with just a few words. Sometimes there was no

reply; he'd just stare at me, wide-eyed until I felt he had lost all human perception.

Other times he reminded me of  the metaphor the prophet Isaiah used to describe

Jesus:  Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter…so Philip did not open his mouth. 


     When  Philip swallowed his first antidepressant,  his legs froze on him the next

morning. He wasn't given any more antidepressants until months later, when he was

moved back to his retirement home and able to eat regular meals. Though he had

 daily longed  for this return,  Philip remained depressed. We prayed together each

time I visited him, and for a few moments  Philip would come alive, but soon

relapsed.

  During one visit, I wanted so badly  to see my  coffee buddy become a person

again that  I broke the few  rules I knew about caring for a clinically   depressed 

person.  I confronted Philip about his depression, told  him to fight it,  face it

aggressively as he did during those eight weeks of  his Army basic training.  I lectured,

preached, pleaded.  I wanted him  angry, sad—anything to make him come alive. feel.  Finally, I Have

 you, Philip, have you gone to your  knees and begged God to heal you?  Have you?  Of course he had, 

 he said.

    "All I want is some friendly conversation" .  We gave it to each other, I looked at my friend and said

 with a  full  heart, "Philip, I miss our friendship."   

    "I understand," he said ,then added, "You know, Bob,  people have to work out

their illnesses in their own way. " 


    I telephoned him a week later,  and we went to a Panera Bread Café.   Philip  had a cup of  tea. I

 asked him what he wanted most in life,  hoping it was something I could help with.  

 "I'd like to get my personality back. ". He was  audible and  said little more.


 When leaving the retirement home later,  I reminded one of the attendants that

my friend's fingernails were horribly long and if she would please cut them.  When I spoke to his niece

 the next day, she said Philip's physician had recently given a negative prognosis about Philip; he would  not live much longer.  I asked her to invite Philip to my upcoming birthday party. Philip

told he   it was too soon for that. He sent me a greeting card, and I smiled as I opened

it,   but then  swallowed hard when I saw his signature. It was tiny, only  the P in his

name was legible;  all the  letters were tightly squeezed together . It was the

penmanship  so characteristic of  someone  with  Parkinson's disease.

                                                  ***

   I shall visit my friend in Heaven.  I  know his  eulogy  written said by Saint Francis de Sales, a

 great figure of the 17th Century rebirth of religious  mystical life ,  was meant for humans like Philip . .

                             I am a poor, frightened little creature,  the baby of the family,

                              timid and shy by nature and completely lacking in self-

                              confidence; and that is why I should like people to let me

                              live unnoticed and all on my own according to my

                              inclination,  because I have to make such enormous efforts

                              about shyness and my excessive fears….I have been

                              slighted and I rejoice: that is what the Apostles did. So to

                              live according to the spirit is to do what faith, hope and

                              charity teach us to do, whether in things temporal or things

                              spiritual….So, rest in the arms of God's  mercy and fatherly

                              goodness.

                                                THE END

                                                                                                           Comments are welcome

  at RRSCHWARZ777@GMAIL.com 

                                                                                                          exodustrekkers.blogspot.com

                                                                                              © 2014, 2023, 2024 

      Robert R. Schwarz


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