We are only lost until we see,we are lost because we ant o be.

I had to take a time out to go to google to see if I wrote these words on a desolate night looking out the window on 2260 Lake avenue in winter 1957. I found lots of other bundles of words expressing similar  sentiments; even some by MLK delivered in a sermon in Detroit before I ever chanced upon him. It was at a time when I believed I was in the world but not of it. This was a state of being often expressed in the seminary among those of us pursuing chastity. It was only later that I learned to pursue charity.
None the less these words encapsulated feelings that I remember having when I was a young boy reaching the age of reason. I lost my innocence about that time. My days of happiness and remembering the love of my parents and my life shared in this atmosphere with my sister  twenty two months my junior were shattered by my father taking his cousin's wife with him to a meeting in New York City. My Mother had turned down his invitation to her to join him, He was a steamfitter who had been  promoted to Vice President of a company in the burgeoning oil business. We had moved from a modest bungalow to a fancy house about a years before. I remember the days in the bungalow nostalgically. It was on a beautiful sunny Summer day that I discovered godspit in the rambling fied behind our house. The sun danced off a glob of white on a clump of grass. What's that ? A Benson child with us proclaimed,"That's god spit". So it was that I discovered god spit before I discovered God.
I still believe that my father wanted to be forgiven for his carnal act, but it was 1940 and divorce was really not available for a member of a Catholic family of nine. Yet my mother was strong willed even through her desolation and being  eight months pregnant. Her family took us in and my adventures in a new kind of life began.In my early days in second grade at St Augustine;s Parish school in Hartford Connecticut , Sister Mary Richard a nervous,bespectacled  tall pale woman told us she had to leave the room. "Say your prayers while I am gone". I didn't know prayers, so I jumped up on my desk and shouted the pledge of Allegiance to the United States of America. World War two was happening and we were all very patriotic .
Sister rushed back into the room and was very nervous. "What happened? " Leo Goodwin dimed me out. 'It was Billy Baker Sister,he climbed on his desk and recited the pledge of allegiance." Sister almost in a panic, told me to go with her to Sister Eulalie's office. Sister Eulalie was a feared figure in the school She was four by four and she had a wide strap around her wide girth which she used liberally to keep boys in line. I learned all of this later from other classmates. She dismissed Sister curtly and after she scurried away, she asked me to tell her what happened and I did.

Sister had  left the room She told us to be quiet and to say our prayers.I still wondered why she left the room Did nuns have to pee? I didn't know any prayers,so I recited the pledge of allegiance.You have to stand up for that and speak loudly. So I did. Sister had a strange look on her face as I told her what had happened. She said "well you will be making your first Holy Communion in the Spring and we will be teaching you the catechism to get ready for that. We will teach you about Original Sin:. I interrupted. What's sin?.  She had an almost kind look on her face when she told me to go back to class.
Being different has its compensations and hindrances.I like what Michelle Obama said during the election. :They go low, we go high. We must love our neighbor as we love ourselves. These days it is very difficult for me to do what I know I must do. It's a kind of two step;  first forward, then back.
We can't go it alone. We need friends who can give us the grace to keep on doing what our inner voice says just as we have to there for them when they are close to running on empty.We need to take the time to look after ourselves .We need to reflect and to meditate as we seek the world that is not yet