Road to Holy

By Jim Chapman

Asking "Who am I? Why am I here?"
Is not so much a sign of ignorance or confusion,
As it is a standing up to the Universe,
A demand for answers.
Not an “Is this all there is?”
But an “I know there’s more!”
Each question is my motivation:
A pinprick,
An alarm clock,
A hair shirt,
My reason to get up in the morning.
Emerson:
Life only avails, not the having lived.
Power ceases in the instant of repose . . .

Of the universe don't be afraid to ask.
From the universe don't be afraid to accept.
At night, I can walk out and look up and see
Numerous points of light and a clear sky, a clarity,
Presaging a beautiful day for the morrow,
And I feel good.
Or, I can fall backwards in giddy wonder
On the same ground,
Under the same star-filled sky,
And instead see, in every blazing jewel above me,
An untold number of promises of the riches
To be found in Humble Awe.
Everything about this earth astounds me.
Everything about this earth tempts me to believe
That there's nothing I understand.
And everything I want to.
The tramp of a good pair of walking shoes
On distant soils
Stirs up the dust of a lot of questions.
I suppose it might be asked, "Why leave town?”
“Why stretch?”
Temptations, like bacilli, live everywhere among us.
And I suppose the answer could be-
"That's just who I am."
When I first considered,
"What makes life holy?"
I knew
I had to add in everything.
Whatever it took,
Wherever it took me.

A grateful perspective shapes our ends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Chapman
• Release date: Apr 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301902064

Jim Chapman

Notre Dame in Philosophy, Peace Corps in Africa, Three years in Venice, University of Oregon in Italian, 55 countries in the world, and counting.

Book preview

THE ROAD TO HOLY

by

Jim Chapman

Smashwords Edition January 2013

Copyright © 2013 by Jim Chapman

All rights reserved: no part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from author. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

 CONTENTS

Title Page

Epigraph

Introduction

ROAD TO HOLY: JERUSALEM

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13

ROAD TO HOLY: INDIA

14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27

28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33

ROAD TO HOLY: ITALY

34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41

42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48

Epilog

"Get me another glass o’ whiskey, darlin’,

this clarity’s frightenin’."

–Peter McNaughton

 Introduction

If heaven made him,

earth can find some use for him.

—Chinese proverb.

It comes down to this: what solutions can we devise during the time we are allotted?

* * *

I decide to find out by traveling to some of those places in our world where we have historically come together to pose our questions and where we have hoped to hear answers. What have we heard and how much have we understood?

* * *

From the center point on what I see as the graph of my life, (the intersection of X and Y, so to speak) at which point every one of us begins our life, every possibility radiates out to infinity. Heaven has started us at the centermost point of our world and it is for each of us to formulate our own personal equation and establish the arc of our own life as we can and we must.

For better or worse, we inevitably will.

Sometimes the trajectory of our personal arc becomes unsustainable, or unacceptable, or simply too familiar or unenlightening. Then, maybe through mishap or, more hopefully, by intention, we have to re-examine that equation and insert new variables and re-direct our life.

* * *

If we suddenly find ourselves staring back at ourselves in a mirror, it will usually be through the reflections of friends and family, science and history, both official and commonsensical. But, as we examine ourselves, perhaps we will be especially staring at the traditions, religious and non-religious, in our every wrinkle. And nowhere do we stare harder than in our holy places and at our holy books.

* * *

Many people have their books that they turn to when they seek some answers.

Mine is my passport.

* * *

On a planet as circular as this one, to go to the ends of the Earth may merely mean to turn around, though I don’t fight shy of the long way out.

* * *

Maybe there’s a way to divine a sense for holy.

And of what earthly use it might be.

* * *

I decide to start in Israel.

Then I will go to India.

And then on to Italy.

* * *

The Lord of Blue Sky got us to here.

It’s up to us to get any further.

ROAD TO HOLY

JERUSALEM

 CHAPTER 1

… off to see the world

There’s such a lot of world to see

--Jonny Mercer

On the way to the airport, from inside the darkness of the taxi, I see a baby running naked down the middle of the highway in front of us.

* * *

I yell at the cab driver to stop.

* * *

He snorts inside his white beard, confused. In his decrepit car with its nearly worthless headlights, he doesn’t see the young child in front of us. This could only happen at 4:30 in the morning, in the complete darkness.

There are no other cars on the road.

* * *

Again I yell at him to stop. He still doesn’t seem to understand what I’m yelling about, but yelling a second time does convince him to stop. He looks at me and then, to where I am pointing.

"What the—?! he exclaims.

He sits there, stupefied, his cab stopped in the center of the dark, empty road.

* * *

That I had chosen to sit in the front seat, where I could see the road, saved this little child’s life.

* * *

I jump out of the taxi and pick up the child, who might be three years old, and who is terrified and screaming loudly, while the driver (his name is Mike) calls 911. I stand in the middle of the street with this little being in my arms, who, except for a small shirt, has nothing on and is shaking. His arms clamp around my neck.

* * *

On a night where events are moving very quickly, we are fortunate to find ourselves stopped in front of a small motel.

Someone has to be there, I think.

I bang on the dark window of the door. An Indian couple, the owners of the motel as it turns out, appear and offer to help, after I explain what has happened.

They are as nonplussed as I am.

I must have awakened them, from what seems like my own, strange dream.

Now we are all in it together!

* * *

Mike runs into the motel lobby, where I am holding the child (wondering if I am going to be peed upon in my crisp airplane clothes) and asks me if it’s a boy or a girl.

How am I supposed to know? I wonder.

But only for a moment, and then, oh yeah, my mind works again and I take a look.

* * *

It’s a boy.

He’s so small and so like a forlorn puppy.

* * *

Vague thoughts about missing my flight crowd in.

* * *

The police arrive within minutes.

As we leave, I tell the officer to wrap up the naked little guy, whom he has riding on top of the gun in his belt. Perched on the handle of the gun, he is shivering and crying and very tiny.

As we drive away, Mike yells to the cops out his open window. Getta blanket!

* * *

None of this seems real to me as we head to the airport. Mike and I try to piece it all together as we ride on in the darkness.

Do you even comprehend what just happened?

I can’t believe that I almost ran over the little guy! I didn’t see him at all! Man, you saved his life!

I’m sorry that we couldn’t do more, but the cops will get it figured out. When I get back, I’m going to talk to the woman at the motel.

I hope that it’s only the beginning of the little boy’s good luck. I have a feeling that he’s going to need a lot more.

Of all the small stars

In the deep night sky

The one that falls here

Has me asking why

This small warm star stuff

Scared of aloneness

Left his firmament

And swerved into mine

* * *

A child, untimely torn from his mother and father through some existential flaw, runs, seeking shelter in a larger world.

* * *

In the airport, at the newsstand, I share all this with the woman behind the counter, a woman who couldn’t look more matronly and normal. She tells me that she has seen enough cop shows, CSI especially, to know that both the parents must certainly be dead, that the door had been left unlocked on purpose and the child found his way out that way. He had escaped from a den of sin and iniquity. There really is no other way to look at it, she proffers with certainty.

* * *

Normal turns out to be far from it this morning. The way people, all around us, every day, explain life to themselves, amazes me.

* * *

If an answer needs only to account for all the questions that she can think of and none that she cannot imagine, then she may be right. She looks so normal but that sense of normality only begs the problem that normality may be so in name only. Is there such a thing as the Complete Truth? Is there any chance at all of knowing what each of us really believes? Good God! Is what she is saying any crazier than the sheer unreality of the last forty-five minutes? I have to admit that she has an answer, however unlikely, and I don’t. I realize that, through the whole experience, I never did have time to ask myself, Why?

* * *

I am in no position to counter her suggestion. Not yet, anyway. I promise myself to find out what happened when I return.

 CHAPTER 2

More than any time in history, mankind faces a crossroads.

One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness.

he other, to total extinction.

Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

—Woody Allen

The rising sun and the lovely, wonderful clouds of Oregon offer a transcendent way out of the darkness.

* * *

An hour later, the sparkling waves of the Bay welcome me to San Francisco, where I switch over to the long, strange tube from which I hope wondrously to emerge in Israel. My mind is already abuzz with the other-worldliness of my trip, which has now acquired the faint vibrations of a pilgrimage.

* * *

I’m on the plane to Tel Aviv, sitting next to Ehud, an Israeli who lives near the old city of Jerusalem. As part of my explanation of why I am going to Israel, I tell him that one of my daughters is marrying a Jew.

He asks if that is all right with me.

* * *

From the way that he says it, I take him to mean, do I mind if a Jew marries my daughter. This is a side of intermarriage that I have never had posed to me. I get the impression that he is asking me if I am the one objecting. He doesn’t ask if the parents of my Jewish son-in-law are bothered by the marriage to a Gentile. It seems the reverse of my previous experiences with wedding strictures.

But, it may simply be his Middle-easterly delicate way of registering his displeasure at the whole concept of intermarriage.

I begin to see that an even more exquisitely tuned sense of the subtle is going to come in handy.

* * *

I say that I couldn’t be happier with their marriage, that prejudices are self-inflicted burdens on themselves and that another of my daughters is married to a Muslim.

We are, all of us, proud to be one big family.

* * *

He thinks that over for a few moments, and we remain silent for a period of time, but eventually the airline staff comes by to offer us dinner. We choose to agree that a glass of wine solves many problems. Maybe if the flight had been shorter and we were not forced to be together for the duration, we might never have said another word to each other. But it’s a long way to the ends of the Earth.

Plenty of time to restart our conversation.

* * *

A tactic for negotiations in the Middle East? Putting everyone concerned into an enclosed space, for a long time, with plenty of wine?

* * *

The flight is reminiscent of a trip I took long ago across the English Channel, in a hovercraft, with the choppy sea rattling my teeth. Then, I felt like I was rubbing my knuckles back and forth on a washboard and now, I feel the same. Flying can be the best of times, and the worst of times. As W.C. Fields might have said had he not been so preoccupied with the Liberty Bell, I’d rather be anywhere but here.

* * *

The long flight allows my thoughts to return again and again to the child running down the street. It reminds me of the famous picture from Vietnam, of the naked little girl running to escape the horror of napalm, another tragic, existential flaw.

* * *

An hour outside of Tel Aviv, our on-again, off-again conversation having rendered me Jewishly, Muslimly groggy, I marvel at the difficulty of sitting still for so long, talking to a person who begins to seem, eventually, only marginally interested in what we might have to say to each other. We both wait for the beginning of the journey to end.

 CHAPTER 3

Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed,

One never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.

—Garrison Keillor

I arrive in the afternoon, find my hotel, and start walking.

I am one of those people who believe that the world lends itself to being examined intently, on foot. Jacques Cousteau, in another context, emphatically said, Speed is the enemy of observation. I do feel that slowing the thinking deepens the thoughts.

* * *

I didn’t know what to expect from the hotel, pictures on the Internet being what they are, but I find myself in a tight, clean room with a small window that lets in more than enough of the light of the eastern Mediterranean, the light that has illuminated so many thoughts for so many thousands of years. I count myself happy.

* * *

Right Now. Right Here.

Minutiae add up to hours that, in turn, add up to our lives.

* * *

Right here, walking across the busy road separating my hotel from the promenade and beach, the beach that stretches north to the Bosporus and south to the Suez Canal, I feel nothing separating me from the grains of sand here under my feet from the stars in the galaxies out there over my head.

* * *

Right now, in the continuum of my consciousness.

* * *

There seems to be nothing appropriate to say to a dirty woman who asks for money right now except, Here.

* * *

Walking brings me to my senses.

When I can walk, I try to hold my eyes wide open and allow the effervescence of being alive to tumble and foam all about me, sometimes tingling, sometimes blinding, sometimes mingling with and washing away my tears. I push hard on Life to share its secrets, even when Life otherwise turns cheeky and demands that I share mine in return. Traveling far from my friends and family allows me to cut more deeply into the pungent onion’s layers that are my emotions.

* * *

With the right pair of sunglasses, I have learned to walk and cry at the same time, without stepping in front of a bus.

Walking is a long, languid dream out in the open.

* * *

The boardwalk along the coast extends for miles and miles, affording the perfect palliative for my jetlag, that is, to just keep moving. I collapse in the broad soft, faded blue couches of an outdoor restaurant adjacent to the beach. The impending spectacle of the setting of the sun into the Mediterranean Sea more than compensates for the worn beach furniture. I order labane and eggplant.

* * *

Listening to the muezzin, the Muslim call to prayers, and texting my wife Deb, I then rest

Reviews for Road to Holy

[ned buchbinder · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Jim Chapman is a gifted storyteller. He writes with clarity and insight, I can't wait to read more of his work.