St.Patrick's Day

St. Patrick’s Day is special for me. It is my birthday.

The reason I moved to Texas three years ago was to be near my brother Don and his wife Mary. They hosted a party for me on Sunday. A real celebration! I’ll write more about that gathering of friends on another blog. Years ago, when I was homeless and commuting between Albuquerque and Chicago, and Don and Mary were living in New York, they invited me to visit them on my birthday. I went into St. Patrick’s Cathedral, intending to say a short prayer, and found myself watching a procession of three cardinals, a dozen bishops, and numerous clergy, the beginning of a high mass more impressive than Christmas Day mass I attended in St. Peter’s in Rome. The Pope had a much smaller entourage.

Afterwords I stood on the curb with a lot of New Yorkers who greeted their friends in the bag pipe bands and police brigades marching past in the big St. Patrick’s Day parade. Thousands and thousands of police, and someone among the people surrounding me seemed to know someone in every group. If you want to rob a bank in Brooklyn, do it on St. Patrick’s Day. All the police will be in Manhattan marching in the parade.

As I walked up Park Avenue, headed for the Waldorf and the most elegant public ladies’ room in NYC, I saw in front of St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church a sign inviting the public to a “Service of Reconciliation.” I went in. The program was held, not in the sanctuary with its Byzantine mosaics, but in a much plainer adjoining hall. I listened to an Anglican clergyman and Catholic priest talk about growing up in Belfast during “the troubles.” As boys they both had “typical Irish childhoods.” They played soccer and studied the same things in school, but their lives were kept separate by religion. A little pot of shamrocks was passed around the congregation, and each of us were told to break off a small piece of the plant and pass it on to our neighbor. I was alone on a pew near the back. I turned to the young man behind me, handed him the shamrocks, and said, “I’m Ilene from Chicago.”

“I’m Bernie,” he said, “from Staten Island.”

The clergy invited “everyone” to come to the social hall for a reception. I asked Bernie if he would come with me. He said, “I couldn’t. I’m Jewish.”

“This service was about including everyone,” I said. “Won’t you come with me? I don’t know a soul here.”

We went upstairs and stood, sipping punch and nibbling undistinguished cookies. We talked to each other, as no one else spoke to us. I told Bernie that it was my birthday. The Anglican had written a book about his experiences as a chaplain in a Belfast prison. Bernie asked, “Are you going to buy a book?”

“I can’t,” I said. “I’m here in New York as a guest of my brother. I can’t afford even to buy a little paperback.”

Bernie walked away. A few minutes later he came back with two books. He handed one to me and said, “Happy birthday.”

One of the best birthday gifts I ever received was that little paperback written by an Irish clergyman and given to me in a rich Episcopal Church in New York by an unemployed school teacher – a Jew and a stranger.