The Archbishop Thumbs His Nose

Well, first things first. I want to express my absolute, complete, and total support to Jason Collins, the 34-year old black basketball player—with, by the way, a degree from Stanford—who came out yesterday. I’m sure that Jason is reading this—the blog having an international readership thanks to some wonderful folk in Tobago—and I wouldn’t want him to feel slighted in any way. Excellent work, Jason!

OK—that was snide. I don’t know how to say this without stepping on toes, so here goes: for me, at least, it’s a little painful to see the rich and famous coming out of the closet after all the rest of us made it possible for them to do so. Elton John I respect; he came out at a time when it wasn’t easy. His career may have suffered—what do I know about pop music? He took it on the chin.

So now we have our first openly gay professional basketball player. And everybody is writing about it and tweeting about it and supporting Jason—including Chelsea Clinton and Joe Kennedy, his former classmates at Stanford.

And Jason says he feels great. And he does, I’m sure. There’s something about being in the closet that is completely stifling. First, you’re always hiding. Second, you’re always acting. Third, you’re always looking over your back, wondering who’s going to expose you. Fourth, you’re always wondering—how would this person react if they knew who I really am?

The list goes on and on, and ends up at the last two questions.

The penultimate: would this person like me?

The ultimate: do I like myself?

So Jason did it, and now—yes—I’m sincere: good for him. And maybe I should come clean—it is to me totally ridiculous that it is only in the year 2013 that we get our first openly gay team-sport male athlete, or whatever he is. We’ve had gay everybody else—senators, rock stars, talking heads—for years now. And now we get our first gay male athlete? Where you guys been?

It’s a measure of how far we’ve come but, yeah, how far we need to go.

Actually, let me tell you where we need to go.

On Saturday, I was watching a great production from the Metropolitan Opera of Giulio Cesare, with the countertenor David Daniels, who was in top form. During intermission, Daniels was speaking with Renée Fleming—they discussed his character, the difficulty of the music, a host of musical questions. At the end, Daniels said, “oh, just one thing, Renée—I gotta say hello to my partner John, who’s dying to meet you.”

Both look at the camera.

“John, this is Renée; Reneée, this is John.”

Renée put on a 7000 candlepower smile and waved at John.

“Hi, John!”

Back to the opera.

Right, now then…

…Worried readers of this blog will want to know: how is the Archbishop getting along? You will remember the little tiff that ensued, when the monsignor put up El Altar de la Patria and than proposed reuniting the prócer Ramón Power y Giralt with his old buddy Arizmendi, the first Puerto Rican bishop. (Or some such thing—I’m too lazy to go look it up….) Those favoring statehood took umbrage—stating that all this was just more politicking from a man who is openly pro-independence.

The Vatican weighed in, nixing both the Altar and the joining of the remains. But the plot thickens—it seems that the archbishop sent a letter on the 20^th of February of this year; the letter contains the following jaw-dropping paragraph:

Eminencia, sutilmente se me indicó que yo tenía que renunciar a la Sede Arzobispal de San Juan y que pidiera otro encargo a la Iglesia. Las injusticias y los procesos injustos jamás pueden ser fuentes de derecho para la renuncia de un Obispo. Este servidor quiere hacer constar que jamás renunciaría a la Sede Arzobispal de San Juan cuando no hay razones para ello.

(For full transcript in Spanish, please click here.)

Here’s a somewhat florid translation:

Your Eminency, subtly was it indicated to me that I must resign the See of the Archbishop of San Juan and that I ask another position in the Church. The injustices and processes unjust can never be the founts of reason for the resignation of a bishop. This servant wishes to state that never would he resign the See of the Archbishop of San Juan when there are no reasons for that.

OK—in ecclesiastical terms, those would be fighting words. Clearly, I had to read the six-page letter from which the paragraph above was culled.

The letter starts well enough; the archbishop expresses his horror at the completely false and terrible charges levied against him. Nor does he know whether they are final charges, or merely charges warranting investigation. Oh, and he’s received nothing—despite his request—in writing, nor was he permitted, in the meeting where the charges were lobbed at him, to take notes.

Right—down to the facts. For over a year, González (the archbishop) “has been submitted” to an apostolic visit—that’s a guy sniffing around, trying to find dirt. González has also been told that there may be other “incognito” visits—those are spies. Eager to clean his name, González has sought an audience with Mauro Piacenza, the Prefect of the Congregation of the Clergy. No luck.

González goes elsewhere, to Monsignor Celso Morga Iruzubieta, the secretary of the Congregation named above. “Hey,” says González, “can I finally get around to naming some people in my archbishopric? It’s been over a year now since the apostolic visitor (or whatever he’s called) told me I couldn’t.”

“No problem,” says Iruzubieta, and then González shows him the letter telling him that he couldn’t.

Guess what? Iruzubieta gets into a fluster and leaves the room. Predictably, on return, Iruzubieta tells him—hey, hold off on those appointments and I’ll get back to you.

Aha—so that’s why I’ve been seeing the archbishop hanging around his mailbox these many mornings!

Now then, in the meeting of 15 December 2012, during which those grievous and unfounded canards were shot at the archbishop, he was told to hold this matter in the strictest confidence, and especially not to speak of the matter to any of the four or five Puerto Rican bishops.

This, very sadly, González has found himself morally unable to do.

In fact, he has found himself morally obliged to confide in a number of people; here’s a little list:

1.     Félix Lázaro, Bishop of Ponce

2.     Álvaro Corrada, Bishop of Mayagüez

3.     Cardinal Bernard Law

4.     Cardinal William Joseph Levada

5.     Cardinal Seán O’Malley

6.     Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga

7.     Cardinal Timothy Dolan

8.     Archbishop Gerhard Müller

González spoke to Müller, in fact, because Müller is prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. And it was necessary to speak with him because there are four wrong, unjust, and deeply hurtful accusations being slung at the archbishop. And they are:

1.     Protecting pederast priests

2.     Doing an investigation of Reverend Edward Santana without having jurisdiction to do so

3.     The “shared residences”

4.     The altar de la Patria

We are now on page five of a six-page letter. Just enough time for González to write the paragraph quoted and translated above, to restate his innocence, as well as to express his supreme inner peace that these vicious slanders will not stand up to scrutiny.

Oh, and to express his deepest fraternal love and to send his prayers.

Kiss, goodbye.

Ummm—archbishop, you do know what you’re doing, don’t you? You are courting an invitation to spend some time in Rome; a period of greater contemplation, of deeper communion with God; a period of rest, spiritually and physically. You have said it as well, this ordeal has taken its toll. It’s now time for you eminence to join with your brothers in Rome, where together and fraternally you and they can grow in the correct understanding of the faith, and share in the great and mysterious love of God.

Oh, by the way, I can write the press release….

One Down, One to Go

OK, the standard version goes that Tamerlan Tsarnaev ran into a guy named Misha, who filled Tamerlan’s ears with invective and hatred, thus radicalizing him. Then, Tamerlan went off to Russia for six months, where he picked up his bomb-making skills. Then he came back, went up to New Hampshire, bought the fireworks, and came home to make the bombs. Oh, and he recruited his younger brother, as well.

This story may be true, wholly or in part. What it leaves out is the crucial question—why? Or it may be that the version stated above rests on an unstated premise: the Muslim world is inherently antagonistic to the West. Any Muslim at any moment can be radicalized.

Also implicit is the assumption: there’s nothing wrong with us. And for that to work, we then need to invent a simple theory. There is evil in the world, and those who attack us are evil.

So the two brothers have now been explained—right? Mystery all cleared up?

Don’t think so. First question—could I be radicalized? If I met the odious Misha, would I be powerless to resist his insidious, vile indoctrination? How long would it be before I—or even you—would be slinking into the housewares department of J. C. Penny, seeking half a dozen or so pressure cookers?

Well, the New York Times sees it a bit differently. Their theory goes something like this: Tamerlan, a guy who never fit in, saw his dream dissolve when the Golden Gloves of America, the organization that oversees amateur boxing, decided that only American citizens could compete.

Right—so let’s look at that. Why had Tamerlan never fit in?

Probably age—he would have gotten to the United States sometime in his high school years, and, when there, was put into an English as a Second Language program. So who were his classmates? People who, like him, were just starting the process of assimilating into and understanding a new culture.

It’s a long-simmering debate in education: do these programs help kids by giving them the extra support they need, or do they foster dependence, create a sense of inferiority, and block the process of going from outsider to insider? Tamerlan said he had no American friends; that’s not surprising if he had been studying in a program with other new immigrants.

And his dream is to box, and even in that he’s different. First of all, he boxes European style, standing upright instead of crouching. He’s also consistently overdressed, and he’s got a little work to do on the social skills.

That, actually, was what triggered the dispute… but wait—I’m getting ahead of myself.

In 2009, Tamerlan participated in the New England Golden Gloves of America, and faced a young man from Chicago, Lamar Fenner. By all accounts, Tamerlan was the better fighter and won the match; there were boos when the judges decided to give the match to Fenner.

Tamerlan came back again to compete in 2010. And this time, he completely blew it in a preliminary round of the competition by walking into his opponent’s dressing room—which is forbidden—and telling both his opponent and the opponent’s trainer, “you are nothing. I am taking you down.”

The trainer, Héctor Torres, raised a fuss—why is a non-citizen, a resident alien, allowed to compete? The Golden Gloves of America was just then changing its policy: it allowed resident aliens to compete on all years but those years when the Olympics were to be played.

So Tamerlan was out—cut off from the one thing he wanted to do. So were two or three others. And he wasn’t getting younger, and it would be another year before he could apply for citizenship.

Right—and then he got arrested for slapping his girlfriend at the time. She had called 911, he was arrested but not charged.

Apparently, the incident wouldn’t have imperiled his citizenship application, but it was one more thing to worry about.

We now have a guy who has channeled all of his not-inconsiderable aggression into an activity—boxing—which is now barred to him, professionally speaking. He is sitting at home taking care of his infant daughter while his wife is working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, to scrape up the 1300 bucks they need for rent.

Easy for us to say what he should have done—gone out and gotten a job, attended community college at night, put himself together, gotten over the loss of his dream.

I came to Puerto Rico when I was about thirty-five. I spoke no Spanish, I had had little contact with Puerto Rican culture (Mr. Fernández having convinced himself if not me that he is British), and all my friends had jobs and were working all day. And, like Tamerlan, I had a dream that I saw vanish. I failed the auditions because I choked—I know that now—but there is another truth.

A cellist who has gone through the six years of the Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico has developed a special and usually very close relationship to all of the members of the jury. They know him, they know his family, they have watched and nurtured him for more than a decade. I would have had to be twice as good to have defeated a prized, cherished student. And I knew—or sensed—that going in to those auditions.

Those years of assimilating, of going from outside to in, were some of the most difficult years of my life. Like a 1950’s housewife, I waited for Raf to come home; he, of course, had been dealing with the world all day, and just wanted to eat in peace. I was starved for human contact.

There the similarity ends between Tamerlan and me. I did not come from a part of the world torn by senseless violence. I did not believe that the West was at war with my religion. And I did not come from one hyper-religious country to another hyper-religious country—if materialism can be considered a religion.

Tamerlan was a box of very dry kindling; Misha was the match.

The real question, I think, is Dzhokhar. 

Two Singers, One Unhappy

Well, the first thing to understand about this singer is that even she didn’t like the sound of her own voice.

If you know anything about opera, you’ve probably guessed that the singer is Maria Callas. And though she sobbed when she first heard a tape recording of her voice, she made it distinctive, expressive, and utterly recognizable—“Callas,” people will say, within five seconds of hearing her sing.

Well, she’s a fascinating character, this Greek girl who had no childhood, but had iron discipline and a steely will. Her mother, recognizing her talent, pushes and pushes, and Maria at age five is singing, not playing. Later, her discipline drives her to spend hours at the conservatory, regularly opening and closing the building. And she succeeds—by the time she leaves Greece at age 22 to visit her father in the United States, she had given 20 recitals, and sung in 56 performances of seven operas.

She’s almost blind, and she is—well, pudgy plump or just plain fat. That, from a vocal point of view, is not a problem. In fact, there’s a school of thought that says that all that weight supports the breath. While that may be true, it can also create problems—Callas said that she felt that her voice itself was becoming heavy. And there was the other little problem—she felt the irony of playing slim, dainty heroine when she herself was, in Sir Rudolf Bing’s words, “monstrously fat.”

At any rate, in her early career she had a huge voice that was capable both of heavy, dramatic parts but also lighter, coloratura parts. OK—plain English. There are some voices that are vocally tanks—they can blast through an orchestra blaring at full volume; they tend, however, not to maneuver very well. There are other voices that are mopeds—they can zip around anything. What’s rare is to have the vocal ability to do both. 

Callas could, and astounded. Yes, even from the beginning, there were detractors—largely the old school who demanded a beautiful, clean voice, not an ugly voice with a huge expressive range and wonderful colors. And yes, she wasn’t always having her best night. True also that the voice came with a temperament—there are no recorded instances of anyone describing Callas as “placid.”

So it was a chance, when you plunked down the cash for a performance of Callas. The first question—would she show? The second—would she be any good?

So why did anyone do it? Because if she did come through in both departments, you would have an experience you’d remember for the rest of your life.

She was a phenomenal actress; here’s one director’s view:

For me, she was extremely stylized and classic, yet at the same time, human—but humanity on a higher plane of existence, almost sublime. Realism was foreign to her, and that is why she was the greatest of opera singers. After all, opera is the least realistic of theater forms... She was wasted in verismo roles, even Tosca, no matter how brilliantly she could act such roles.

Speaking of Tosca, it’s often said that she never, ever checked to see whether the stage hands had placed material to cushion her leap from the window. Other singers rush up the ladder, take—well—just a little peek. Callas scorned the idea.

In mid career—the 1950’s, Callas decides to lose weight, which she does not by swallowing a tapeworm, as critics whispered, but by eating salad and chicken. And though it may have been great for her health and for her psyche, it didn’t help, perhaps, her singing. Here’s Renée Fleming on the subject:

I have a theory about what caused her vocal decline, but it's more from watching her sing than from listening. I really think it was her weight loss that was so dramatic and so quick. It's not the weight loss per se... But if one uses the weight for support, and then it's suddenly gone and one doesn't develop another musculature for support, it can be very hard on the voice. And you can't estimate the toll that emotional turmoil will take as well. I was told, by somebody who knew her well, that the way Callas held her arms to her solar plexus [allowed her] to push and create some kind of support. If she were a Soubrette, it would never have been an issue. But she was singing the most difficult repertoire, the stuff that requires the most stamina, the most strength.

Another singer, Deborah Voigt, had a gastric bypass operation and essentially mimicked the weight loss that Callas had undergone. Here’s what she has to say:

When I took a breath before, the weight would kick in and give it that extra Whhoomf! Now it doesn't do that. If I don't remember to get rid of the old air and re-engage the muscles, the breath starts stacking, and that's when you can't get your phrase, you crack high notes.

Callas would end her career in about a decade after her weight loss in 1954, and really, the last years are painful. She was a tempestuous woman, a fiery personality, a high-strung race horse in a profession where a plow horse might be better. But how the public loved it—when Bing fired her from the Met, or her rage-contorted face on being served a summons in Chicago.

And, of course, the rivalry—alleged or real—between Tebaldi and Callas. The two greatest divas of the fifties were traveling South America together, and had a falling out. Callas said in an interview that, “comparing her voice to mine is comparing Champagne to Cognac.” Someone else in the room said, “No, to Coca-Cola,” but the words are attributed to Callas. Tebaldi shot back, “I have something Callas does not have: a heart.”

What Tebaldi had was enviable. She had a very long career—twice as long as Callas’s. She had the more beautiful voice. She also lived long—Tebaldi died at 83, Callas at 53. And though there’s no way to measure the happiness quotient of a human life, much less to compare two lives, nothing can stop me from thinking that Tebaldi had the better deal. Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

During a 1978 interview, upon being asked "Was it worth it to Maria Callas? She was a lonely, unhappy, often difficult woman," music critic and Callas's friend John Ardoin replied,

That is such a difficult question. There are times when certain people are blessed—and cursed—with an extraordinary gift, in which the gift is almost greater than the human being. Callas was one of these people. It was as if her own wishes, her life, her own happiness were all subservient to this incredible, incredible gift that she was given, this gift that reached out and taught us things about music that we knew very well, but showed us new things, things we never thought about, new possibilities. I think that is why singers admire her so. I think that's why conductors admire her so. I know it's why I admire her so. And she paid a tremendously difficult and expensive price for this career. I don't think she always understood what she did or why she did it. She usually had a tremendous effect on audiences and on people. But it was not something she could always live with gracefully or happily. I once said to her "It must be a very enviable thing to be Maria Callas." And she said, "No, it's a very terrible thing to be Maria Callas, because it's a question of trying to understand something you can never really understand." She couldn't really explain what she did. It was all done by instinct. It was something embedded deep within her.   
   

A Saturday Rescued by Music

Time to tell the truth—this blogger took the day off.

It started when I heard the remarkable countertenor, David Daniels, a year ago singing via CD a concert of art songs. And it ended today, when I spent four and a half hours listening to one gorgeous aria after another, all presented by the Metropolitan Opera, coming to me via live feed from New York.

The Saturday afternoon live broadcast from the Met on radio is a thing of the past. So I was happy to pluck down the fifty bucks to get Mr. Fernández and me to a movie house, where we heard four and a half hours of stellar singing, saw Renée Fleming interview the singers, and most, heard what may be the most beautiful Baroque opera ever written.

Readers, I have failed you. Listeners, I give you this, from a blogger still soaring on what may be the most beautiful Baroque opera ever written, Guilio Cesare, by Handel.

Victims and Victor

Rachel Maddow surprisingly doesn’t make the obvious point in the clip below, when she talks about the Carnival Triumph debacle—the poop cruise, as she calls it—and the eight years that we suffered through George W. Bush. The Triumph passengers had a horrific week-long vacation. We spent 8 years while the ship drifted aimlessly, and then fell recklessly into maelstroms. Afghanistan, the financial crisis, Guantanamo, the War in Iraq, Katrina, the erosion of the worldwide goodwill after September 11^th, the list goes on and on.

Or rather, the poop kept rising while the ship kept sinking.

It was a disaster at every turn, and I was fortunate, I now realize, that I was so exhausted by Wal-Mart and Franny that very little of it got in. Yes, I read the headlines, skimmed the articles, and then went out to the back of the building to make my morning call to Franny. Then it was eight hours of teaching, an hour or two of emails / writing / class preparation / brownnosing the Human Resources ladies. (Yes, I caved to pressure, I’m sorry to say, and used to force myself to spend 20 minutes chatting with people in the department. I had been told, you see, that some people felt I was aloof, that I wasn’t fully a part of the department. So chatting I did….)

So all the five presidents and all the first ladies (minus Nancy) got together down in Texas to dedicate the new George W. Bush Library. And of course they would; it’s a club, after all, that handful of ex-presidents, and there must be a tacit disagreement. Once you’re out of office, your job is to shut up. Do good works: solve global warming or AIDS in Africa or build houses for the poor—but shut up.

And no one is gonna deny—the job’s not easy. My problem with W is that for him, it was. He was arrogant and entitled and too stupid to know how stupid he was on the first day of his presidency, when he inherited a country largely on its feet, and W was just as arrogant / entitled / etc. on the last day of his presidency. The difference?

The country was lurching on the edge of financial collapse, the rest of the world despised us, global warming was no longer a theory but a fact, and the United States Constitution had been overridden.

And the worst thing? Through a combination of arrogance and stupidity, Bush never realized the damage he had done. In fact, he said recently that he was “comfortable” with the decisions he had made.

Yeah?

We’ll never see him brought to justice, and I suppose he had to build his damn library, and he could hardly not do that and not dedicate it, and so he invited the boys down to Texas and they sighed and crossed a day out of their lives and whooped it up down in Texas with W and Laura.

And yes, by tomorrow we will have forgotten about it. And if Rachel Maddow is wondering, I can tell her that yes, last week there was a day when four cruise ships sailed into the old city, and walking Calle del Cristo felt more like Des Moines than San Juan. If the Carnival Triumph ever happened, you wouldn’t have known it as you found it impossible to move any faster than the gawking, open-mouthed couple ahead of you permitted.

We forget, the rest of the world does not. Often, of course, because so much happens over-there done by you-know-whom. Take a look at this:

 PAKISTAN

Name | Age | Gender

Noor Aziz | 8 | male


Abdul Wasit | 17 | male


Noor Syed | 8 | male


Wajid Noor | 9 | male


Syed Wali Shah | 7 | male


Ayeesha | 3 | female


Qari Alamzeb | 14| male


Shoaib | 8 | male


Hayatullah KhaMohammad | 16 | male


Tariq Aziz | 16 | male


Sanaullah Jan | 17 | male


Maezol Khan | 8 | female


Nasir Khan | male


Naeem Khan | male


Naeemullah | male


Mohammad Tahir | 16 | male


Azizul Wahab | 15 | male


Fazal Wahab | 16 | male


Ziauddin | 16 | male


Mohammad Yunus | 16 | male


Fazal Hakim | 19 | male


Ilyas | 13 | male


Sohail | 7 | male


Asadullah | 9 | male


Khalilullah | 9 | male


Noor Mohammad | 8 | male


Khalid | 12 | male


Saifullah | 9 | male


Mashooq Jan | 15 | male


Nawab | 17 | male


Sultanat Khan | 16 | male


Ziaur Rahman | 13 | male


Noor Mohammad | 15 | male


Mohammad Yaas Khan | 16 | male


Qari Alamzeb | 14 | male


Ziaur Rahman | 17 | male


Abdullah | 18 | male


Ikramullah Zada | 17 | male


Inayatur Rehman | 16 | male


Shahbuddin | 15 | male


Yahya Khan | 16 |male


Rahatullah |17 | male


Mohammad Salim | 11 | male


Shahjehan | 15 | male


Gul Sher Khan | 15 | male


Bakht Muneer | 14 | male


Numair | 14 | male


Mashooq Khan | 16 | male


Ihsanullah | 16 | male


Luqman | 12 | male


Jannatullah | 13 | male


Ismail | 12 | male


Taseel Khan | 18 | male


Zaheeruddin | 16 | male


Qari Ishaq | 19 | male


Jamshed Khan | 14 | male


Alam Nabi | 11 | male


Qari Abdul Karim | 19 | male


Rahmatullah | 14 | male


Abdus Samad | 17 | male


Siraj | 16 | male


Saeedullah | 17 | male


Abdul Waris | 16 | male


Darvesh | 13 | male


Ameer Said | 15 | male


Shaukat | 14 | male


Inayatur Rahman | 17 | male


Salman | 12 | male


Fazal Wahab | 18 | male


Baacha Rahman | 13 | male


Wali-ur-Rahman | 17 | male


Iftikhar | 17 | male


Inayatullah | 15 | male


Mashooq Khan | 16 | male


Ihsanullah | 16 | male


Luqman | 12 | male


Jannatullah | 13 | male


Ismail | 12 | male


Abdul Waris | 16 | male


Darvesh | 13 | male


Ameer Said | 15 | male


Shaukat | 14 | male


Inayatur Rahman | 17 | male


Adnan | 16 | male


Najibullah | 13 | male


Naeemullah | 17 | male


Hizbullah | 10 | male


Kitab Gul | 12 | male


Wilayat Khan | 11 | male


Zabihullah | 16 | male


Shehzad Gul | 11 | male


Shabir | 15 | male


Qari Sharifullah | 17 | male


Shafiullah | 16 | male


Nimatullah | 14 | male


Shakirullah | 16 | male


Talha | 8 | male

Right—so what is it? It’s the list of kids who have been killed in drone attacks in Pakistan.

“No,” you say. “It can’t be. You trawled through the Internet and found a site to your liking, and now you’re ramming anti-America propaganda down our throats.”

http://www.policymic.com/articles/24164/a-list-of-children-killed-by-drone-strikes-in-pakistan-and-yemen

Well, it’s true—I haven’t checked out this site, which, by the way, adduces a Colombia Law School Human Rights Institute study that says that up to 98% of drone deaths are civilians.

But of course we do remember, on those rare occasions when the carnage takes place on our soil. We read the three thousand names every September 11^th.  Next April 15^th, there will be ceremonies, minutes of silence, bowed heads, tears and prayers.

I’m guilty of it myself. I had written about Tomas Young, the Iraq vet who wrote an angry last letter to George W. Bush, and then set himself the date of 20 April 2013 as the start date for his fast until his death.

20 April 2013—the day after two young men shut down an entire city plus several substantial suburbs / small towns. These “terrorists” killed five people and maimed over 150 victims.

Horrifying and completely indefensible.

But what would you say if you were the family of Luqman / 12 / male—to choose at random just one of the names on  the list above?

And sadly, there is a group of Americans who will remember—or rather, who are incapable of not remembering.

Guys like Tomas Young, whose damage is physical, if they’re lucky. Or guys who have the worst fate thrust on them. Guys with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, guys who startle awake at 2AM when a car backfires, guys who take their wives “hostage” when their kid forgets not to slam the screen door.

The Missing Voice

It was my shrink who posed the question: where are the Imams? We can do things, he felt—install more video cameras, get better surveillance, collect intelligence better—but look, that’ll never be enough. These two kids—who everyone describes as polite, outgoing, typical young adults—couldn’t have been more Americanized. So why aren’t the Imams saying this: anyone who kills an innocent bystander is not Muslim, he has violated the religion, he is out of the church.

Well, that was something to think about, on the bus on the way home. And interesting to reflect on the people I had seen, since the tragedy unfolded. There were the family members: the mother fiercely defending her sons; the father, incredulous and also insisting on the innocence of his children; both uncles, one who voluntarily came forward, the other who had deferred to (presumably) the elder. There were the neighbors: the woman who heard Tamerlan’s angry wife shout at him late on summer nights; the car mechanic who asked how much Dzhokhar’s fancy shoes cost. There were former classmates and teachers, as well as boxing and wrestling coaches. In short, anybody who had passed one of these brothers on the street and said hello was getting up and telling the world about it.

So who didn’t phone in?

The Imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC).

Who is not, according to him, a coward. Instead, he’s a six-foot-five-inch guy named Suhaib Webb who started life out Christian, lost his faith and joined a gang, got tangled up in a drive-by shooting, and emerged Muslim from it all in 1992. So he gave up being a DJ, went to the University of Oklahoma, got a degree in Education. Then, from 2004-2010, he studied at Al-Azhar in Cairo. He has been the Imam of the ISBCC since 2011.

And there’s stuff to like about him. He joined, in 2010, a group of Imams who went to Auschwitz and then denounced those who refused to believe the existence of the Holocaust. He raised 20,000$ for widows and children of firefighters after September 11.

There’s something else. In a YouTube clip about “Yes, There can be an American Islam,” he seems to come out as a centrist, not an extremist. It should be about synthesis, he tells his kids, it should be about being in the center. And certainly he comes across that way on a “Face the Nation” clip that I watched, also on YouTube. There, he appears with three or four religious leaders, and he’s quick to establish his credentials—his love of the Celtics, his Oklahoma roots. Then he throws in a little nugget—his is the fastest growing faith in the US, with 2 million members, 65% of whom are young. That’s as big as the Episcopalians.

Right—so am I being fair to this guy, when I make the charge that every clerk who sold a pair of sneakers to one of the brothers was on TV last week: where was the (presumed) spiritual leader of at least the elder brother?

Well, I’m a son of a newspaper guy…I had to balance this out.

And today, in fact, I read his “No Room for Radicals” post on his website, SuhaibWebb.com. Originally published in the New York Times, it is not much, despite its title, of a condemnation of the Tsarnaev brothers actions. Webb’s point is that there is no need, as Peter T. King, the Republican Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence is asking for, for increased scrutiny of the Muslim community. Why? Because the younger Tsarnaev apparently never stepped foot in a mosque, and the older found the moderate views expressed there “unpalatable.” In short, the mosque didn’t “radicalize” the brothers; blame the Internet.

It’s a point of view.

And there’s more. You know, of course, that I had to check out the guest post entitled “Gay Muslims: The Elephants in the (Prayer) Room.”

Well, it’s painful to read—no, not because it’s hateful or even condemnatory. It is, in fact, a plea for tolerance by a man, still in the closet, who has clearly struggled with being gay and Muslim, and who (sorry to drop the news here) is not quite out of the woods. “The number of times I have wished I weren’t gay…” he writes, and I remembered a time when I myself would have written the sentence.

About 30 years ago….

So I applaud Webb for taking it on, for addressing the issue. The question does rise to the surface, though—has American Islam made the progress that the Episcopal Church has on the issue? Do we have gay Imams, as we have gay bishops? (By the way, I am capitalizing “Imam” following the style of Webb’s website—why am I not capitalizing “bishop” in the same sentence?)

And I also could applaud the Imam’s reluctance to give Tamerlan Tsarnaev a proper burial; check out this quote from an article in the Christian Science Monitor:

Adds Yusufi Vali, executive director of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, in an interview with CNN: “I don't care who or what [the alleged] criminals claim to be, but I can never recognize [them] as part of my city or my faith community.”

In fact, at least one Boston cleric, Imam Talal Eid, has refused to bury the elder Tsarnaev according to Islamic rites. “I would not be willing to do a funeral for him," he told The Huffington Post. "This is a person who deliberately killed people. There is no room for him as a Muslim.”

Hey—good words! And to answer a question raised by my shrink, there is no excommunication in Islam; it is theologically impossible for a group of Imams to get together and decide when to kick out an errant member out of the faith.

Another point—it might not be possible for a group of Imams to get together and speak out. Here’s what one website had to say about Islam:

There is no formal clergy, no ordaining body, and no hierarchy. The relationship between the individual and God is a direct one. No one besides God can declare what is lawful and what is sinful. No created being can bless another. Each individual is directly accountable to his or her Lord and Creator.

Right—so where are we left?

Not, to me, in a particularly good place. Even if the Tsarnaev brothers had no or minimal contact with the ICBCC, Webb is still the preeminent Muslim in the city. He’s perfectly justified in distancing himself and his organization from the brothers—in fact, that’s exactly what I want him to do.

There’s something else, and I’m gonna say it. Readers of this blog know that I am a very bad Buddhist, and also that I am as tone deaf to spiritual matters as my brother was to the trombone. So what do I know?

Right—here goes.

Each day, I take my walk, in the middle of which I come to the end of the path. To my right, the centuries-old walls to the city of San Juan soar up, to my left the mouth of the harbor is receiving cruise and cargo ships. In front of me is the ocean, which is battering the rocks, hurling spumes of white, frothy water to splatter on the blue sky. Mozart or Monteverdi or Mahler is filling my ears and brain. I stop for several minutes, I ponder, I contemplate. Mostly, I just…am.

I turn around and walk home again.

That’s as close as I can get.

The problem?

I look at the videos below, and I feel nothing of the peace, the serenity, the awe, and the joy of water leaping against a sky, of a breeze whispering across my skin, or of a mind meeting and melting into a trumpet.