My father's superpower is his ability to illuminate the inner path. Illumination of the inner path means the ability to recognize that you have a mind, a mind that is something of a garden which needs tending. You could not grow up in his house without knowing that everything 'out there' in the world is not everything there is. There were not so many things 'out there' to get as a mission in life as there were 'in here' that were rewarding.
As a child, his favorite pastime was to take a book into the woods behind his house, make himself invisible and read. As an adult he became a writer, a man of letters and corresponded with fellows in the intellectual tumult of the 1960s. He was a photographer and would spend much of his spare time going 'out there' to capture something appealing on film, and then bringing it home to appreciate 'in here'. As an older man he has gone progressively deeper into faith, with his own interpretations of how God moves in the world. Yes well, anything not inside the mind is God's business. The foolishness of God's creatures, those described in Mark 12:24, was not his concern.
He is not interested in the affairs of mankind. Not in business. Not in politics. Not in anything on television, or anything on the radio unless it is a particular style of jazz whose practitioners are mostly deceased. He lives on his inner path. The internet? He couldn't care less. The stock market? Whatever. He cares about his family, because all of them were his idea in the first place. And he reveres his own departed parents because he was their idea. He doesn't even invite people into his own inner path, but only demands they respect him. All of his books? The seeds he planted in his own garden? He sits among them as a reminder that he actually doesn't remember. But he will only give them to his own family, because we were his idea in the first place. University libraries? Art museums? These things out there are unworthy of his inner possessions. Their demands and needs are meaningless to him.
It would seem that his one stable passion over the past two decades would be the women's shelter he regularly visits and gives flowers from the alter of St. John's Church. Few remember that this long journey began as a literacy project. Yes, and even the last time his own dear father came out to stay in Los Angeles, Bob Bowen wanted only to have him write. To share his inner world. This, alas did not happen. Raymond C Bowen was a bon vivant and wanted to enjoy the delights of a Rob Roy cocktail. He was not interested in writing memoirs. But the homeless women of the downtown Women's Centers had stories to tell. He coaxed that creativity out of them, reminded them that their inner lives were gardens to be tended. And so he helped them by illuminating their inner paths.
There was never a moment when my father did not recognize the value of thoughts. He would never fail to ask what you were reading, what you were thinking, what did the world look like from your point of view. He was full of praise for the sacraments of talent and creative expression that showed an inward commitment to the life of the mind. It was how he revered the soul of anyone.
That is where he lives. He lives there inside of us and inside of himself. And yet he is there again trapped inside of his superpower's desire to make the external subject to the internal. He is ever unable to resist herding us all together for the picture he is about to take. He is ever unable to resist hushing us for the moment of prayer. He is ever unable to resist sharing of the most simple pun. He even talks to his dogs. He never physically sits with them or pets them or teaches them tricks. But he always talks to their doggy minds.
Someday in the future when we are all dead and gone, there will be someone among our descendants who will wonder how they discovered their own inner paths. How did that light and satisfaction in their lives persist despite their crumbling surroundings? When the world has gone to shit, how do they keep a sense of humor? What is that spark that keeps them holding on. Well once upon a time, people believed no such spark existed in certain men, and they were enslaved for that. But this man, my father, had a superpower. He used it well.
From Los Angeles, I bring you 
Recent Comments