If there was a Charles Lamb, there was also a Charles Wolf. The latter is my friend who, I learned at 2,15 this morning after my night adoration, “signed off” at 87 last April 25, the Feast of St. Mark, his favorite evangelist. He has entered the portals of the perpetual present and he now challenges me to put into practice what I wrote in this blog yesterday: memory = presence, in the manner of our Teacher and Lord Jesus Christ.I met Charlie in 1990 when I was searching for a spiritual director to guide me in the 30-day Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. That was the start of another phase of my formative process. Charlie had three “passions” as I knew him.
First, there was the Gospel of Mark. According to him, Mark was the narrator par excellence of the “subversive” Gospel of God Incarnate. He passed on to me a copy of Robert Hamilton’s “The Gospel of Mark: Parable of God Incarnate.” I quote from this article which I think serves as the foundation for Charlie’s approach to God and Jesus in Mark. “God baffled Mark. Mark seems to find him at times a disappointment, a puzzle, even an enemy. (..) Nevertheless, Mark rises to this ultimate challenge by presenting Jesus as the parabole of God incarnate in a book which is itself an extended parabole and which encounters us as a Zen master encounters a pupil. It shocks us into a state of affirmation-consciousness.”
Charlie’s other passion was birds and wildlife. The webpage which I linked to his name explains the origin of his love for nature. Up to the end of his active life, he was concerned with the protection of wildlife even and especially in the midst of development. I’d like to quote a part of his homily published in the supplement of Philippine Clipper (March 1999). Sharing about his knowledge of the birds present in Ateneo de Manila campus where he walked (literally) for a good part of his life, he recounts: “What is the most beautiful bird on the campus? For me it is the pitta – a small ground bird always hiding in the underbush — and rather shy of people. It is black, white red and a beautiful cobalt blue and green. A month or so ago I heard them outside my window. But they had to move because their habitat of the underbush was cut away. They need the bushes for nesting and protection. Another name for the pitta is the jewel thrush—a truly beautiful gift of God to our campus. (…) We need to make sure that this God-given gift of wildlife does not disappear, but thrives side by side with ongoing campus development. It is not an either-or situation. Rather it is a both-and situation: both campus development and continued wildlife.(…)"
Indeed, one of the unforgettable spiritual direction sessions I had with Charlie was when I saw him so distracted with the arrival of a red-necked bird (a pitta??) which took shelter in the garden outside the counselling room where we were. Charlie’s eyes were transformed: I saw the “boyish wonder” but also a worried stare. In fact, he excused himself and explained to me what that ‘visit’ meant: “they (the developers of the university campus) are cutting the underbush again!”
Lastly, Charlie was an ardent reader of Bernard Lonergan. He told me that for a good number of years, he read Lonergan and followed the Lonergan exercises in order to arrive at real knowing – attending to one’s experience, understanding one’s experience, judging one’s experience and appropriating one’s experience. And what was all this for: it was in order to take possession of the “intelligence which was always yours and so transform your life through its creative power.” Lonergan’s epistemological method helped Charlie consolidate his Ignatian spirituality and share it with others like me. I don’t know if he would forgive me in doing this but I like to share here his “prayer-poem” on self-appropriation, an example of how his decision to “stick with Lonergan” helped him not only to self-appropriate but also to delight in his union with the Word Incarnate!
"I rest – and let my living word speak itself to my eternal Father, my word – Charlie:
- with its foundations among the electrons, protons, atoms
- with its lower manifolds: molecular, cellular, neural, psychic
- with its phantasmal roots and deep wells of unconscious cerebration
- with its sensations, emotions, affective tinglings
- with its multi-livelled conscious and intentional activities: sensing, intelligent, reflecting, affirming
- with its deliberations, decisions, choices (that have made me me)
- with its wonders of wisdom and knowledge (achieved and GIVEN) – achievement and GIFT
- with its sheer historicity
I speak my word – Charlie – in union with the Word Incarnate
- to the delight of our heavenly Father
- my word: in many ways incorrect, incomplete, inadequate
- yet a wonder am I – so rich, so poor..!
Let all that is within me praise the Lord!
The Lord hears the cry of the poor! - Charlie Wolf, (July 21-24, 1993)
