Be of few words

...too much is happening in my life and what's happening is too utterly primal, many-sided, unplumbable...

...When the baby was placed in Mig's arms we looked at her, wept a bit, then at each other and agreed that she wasn't Elizabeth or Maureen or Ermegilda...

...Jesus is Lord...

...There is ample reason for some angst...

...he entered history the day after Sarah had enjoyed a baby shower in her honor attended by numerous Boyles and Hoyts...

...Think of the serpent in Eden, beguiling Eve with "You will be like God...

...Sarah's siblings have cause to worry about her...

...Her Majesty's limitation, which at first had seemed so arbitrary and unreasonable--so ungenerous--began to appear almost recklessly extravagant...

...I don't want to...

...Perhaps my own personal favorite---one wonder of brevity set like a gem in another--is: "Jesus said to her, 'Mary.'" It is not only blessed assurance that comes in quinary, of course...

...Not all claims and accusations of sexual abuse, pedophilia, or incest, are true...

...And for me, one of the most perfect visual brushstrokes in the Gospels is the detail from the story of the disciples on the Emmaus road: "They stood still, looking sad...

...The awkwardly banal "All well here--how there...

...Just as a memorable meal can be prepared from a few simple ingredients, so can a feast of meaning be conveyed by an apparent dearth of words...

...Or, in full, "Sarah Boyle Hoyt," a name first put to formal use at the heading of a Fed X message accepting another new arrival, one Andrew Michael Boyle, into her cousinship...

...Christ's powerful right hand nearly dances above Thomas's head...

...And how could Peter have borne another syllable in Jesus' piercing "Do you love me...

...Here is power and vulnerability perfectly wed: Christian theology in its highest and most graphic expression...

...Desolation as well seems to fit into quintupled phrases: the devastating "and they all forsook him" could be a Holy Week meditation all by itself...

...Your faith has healed you...

...I recalled how moved I had been, on the remote Hebridean Isle of Iona, by the inscription on the watchtower of the lonely abbey church: "Stand fast...

...In English translation at any rate--whether the original Hebrew and Greek are even more austerely economical, I do not, alas, know...

...Many of the most powerful promises in all of Holy Writ are wholly writ in fives...

...For the nonce, at least, we have incredibly deft and gentle live-in help...

...I will send an angel...

...So much for origins...

...Again, cute...

...Similarly, the vision of Saint John at Patmos--the insight that "death shall be no more"--manages to express one of our faith's essential convictions in five little words...

...My peace I leave you...

...God's word to Moses by the light of the burning bush, "I will be with you," Jesus' triumphant "I have overcome the world," and Mary Magdalene's ringing Easter witness "I have seen the Lord," all are cinquefoil, as it were...

...Come to think of it, some deeply significant affirmations, invitations, promises, dramas, and blessings, consist of three words: "So Abram went...

...I began rummaging in my rag-bag English-major mind for quotations, recalling Elizabeth Barrett Browning's parallel fives: "How do I love thee...

...DEBORAH SMITH DOUGLAS Deborah Smith Douglas is a writer, wife, and mother who has been weighing her words on a sabbatical in Scotland...

...Mig and I have some interactive neuroses that may be interesting to counselors but won't be to Sarah...

...Without that pressure, she might have reached college age sort of anonymously...

...OF SEVERAL MINDS Sidney Callahan MEMORY CAN PLAY TRICKS AND SO CAN THERAPISTS he recent allegation of sodomy leveled at Cardinal Joseph Bemardin has raised questions about the phenomenon of recovered memory...

...I was astounded to discover, leafing through my Bible, how many of the passages I had marked over the years happened to consist of five.words...

...Rise and have no fear...

...By the end of the week (much of which I spent secretly counting the words of, and lamenting the excesses of, telephone conversations, newspaper headlines, and public service announcements on the radio), I was convinced that five words--or four, or three, or even two--can speak volumes...

...I counted (under my breath) the words of my favorite poems, of famous quotes, of conversations overheard in the street...

...About the baby' s future, we predicted that, having already worked a couple of miracles (on us, in absentia), she will be "the first pope to be canonized in her own lifetime, along with her husband...

...Merry Christmas--Happy New Year," would of course fit within the required brevity...

...adopting a baby girl...

...Pause for exultation...

...Then I turned my search to Scripture, and was overwhelmed by fives...

...He is risen !" "Come and see...

...But there are countervailing factors as well...

...Clerical pedophilia, clerical sexual abuse, and incest occur and cause horrible pain and psychological suffering for their victims...

...Love is strong as death...

...And there is the divine economy of "light shines in the darkness" and "This Jesus God raised up...

...From Othello III:5, and Desdemona's dying (and even more condensed) reply: "Nobody: I myself...

...I was hooked...

...Five measly words...

...18 3/4 inches...

...There was the urgently telegraphic and classically melodramatic "All discovered-flee at once," moderately unorthodox as Christmas greetings go but unarguably five words...

...I'm seventy-one-goingonseventy-two...

...I remembered Emilia' s anguished "Who hath done this deed...

...It was correct that she arrived in time for Thanksgiving...

...What is most striking about the set is the figure of Christ--he simultaneously beckons to Thomas to touch his wounded side and blesses the recalcitrant Apostle...

...Five words...

...Surely "Alleluia" and "Amen" are all we really need most of the time...

...The more I browsed, the more I came up with handfuls of fives...

...Welcome, Sarah...

...This Christmas, as every Christmas, we need such art, such realism, such recognition...

...But at the same time, "false memories" also exist as a psychological fact of life...

...Andrew is the newly minted son of Susan and Michael Boyle...

...I posted my letters (paying a shocking penalty for the privilege of verbosity) and walked back across town, muttering to myself and counting on my fingers, intrigued as by a crossword puzzle by Her Britannic Majesty's pentagrammic challenge...

...The first fact we have to confront is that persons who appear to be normal or even moral can secretly indulge in acts of sexual victimization of those in their care...

...Similarly, some of the most poignant prayers in the Bible consist of five words: "Lord have mercy upon me...

...Heavens, why bother...

...Sarah enters not one but two wide and wonderful families and a circle of friends beyond compare...

...At that point we hadn't even seen our soon-to-be daughter, but we could give some standard data: Born four-and-a-half weeks early...

...Go in peace...

...Five words...

...Let me count the ways" (which would presumably have cost her double), and Emily Dickinson's succinct "I'm nobody--who are you...

...Christmas greetings aside, perhaps there were moments in human experience--and instances in the English language--where the motjuste was just five...

...Then, unbidden, my memory produced the haunting final message of Etty Hillesum, scribbled on a scrap of paper and tossed from the window of a train bound for the death camps: "Tell them we left singing...

...What on earth could one say that is worth saying in five words or less...

...Mig said we had to see her first...

...Think about it, as did my youngest grandchild, Timmy, four years old...

...I've just interrupted this writing to go and hold Sarah...

...Human memories are much more complex...

...from Scotland, when the hand-written notice caught my eye...

...With the benefit of this experience, and with the help of several amanuenses, Sarah was able to inform Andrew of things to come: "I've had occasion to observe at VERY close range that you have a wonderful wide family who will google and coo at you and hand you around from lap to lap and tickle your toes and pat your head and feed your face and wipe your bottom and make funny faces till you'll wish you were back in the womb...

...Thanks for coming...

...doing well...

...on first meeting Sarah he said, "She's my aunt...

...It was perfectly obvious that she was "Sarah...

...I was able, with effort, to outstare her...

...Unreliable false accounts, even 6:17 December 1993 Commonweal...

...She hasn't even seen a dog yet...

...Make haste to help me...

...marking his 60 years of service to Commonweal and the beginning of Commonweal's 70th year of publication Join us on Thursday, January 20, 1994 12:10 Mass at St...

...as of course could Jesus' cry from the cross: "Why hast Thou forsaken me...

...also briefly occurred to me, but on the whole I felt the fve-word limit reflected a stinginess unbecoming a Royal Mail, and dismissed the matter from my mind...

...All the rest of that day, and well into the following week, I found myself weighing the treasures of the English language in postal scales...

...RSVP by January 3, 1994 Admonitions seem naturally to lend themselves to pentamerous compression: Scripture positively brims with fiveleaved proverbs and aphorisms: "Go and sin no more," "Serve the Lord with gladness...

...Or two...

...As psychologists study the processes of human perception, imagination, emotion, and cognition, it has become clear that illusory memories of past events can be constructed...

...Containing whole worlds of sorrow, love, and courage...

...Birth mother twentytwo, Irish-Catholic background, already a mother but unable to provide for a second child...

...Five measly words...

...After all, so many powerful sayings were compact in four words--Mother Julian's visionary "All shall be well," for instance...

...Substantially reduced postal rates would be available for the holidays, the Royal Mail announced, for unsealed greeting cards containing no more than five words in addition to the printed rues4:17 December 1993 Commonwealsage and the sender's name...

...So many of Jesus' words are familiar to us in clusters of five: "I am the good shepherd...

...but she warmed me more than I warmed her...

...I beguiled my time in the queue by pondering this weighty question...

...It doesn't adequately clarify the subtext...

...The human mind and memory do not process information like a computer in which discrete data go into storage and can be retrieved, intact, on command...

...NOTEBOOK HOME FOR CHRISTMAS THE BIRTH OF A FAMILY t's my turn to write a "Notebook...

...Even more appropriately, she'll be on hand for Christmas, when all babies are seen anew, and rightly, as blessings, gifts, miracles...

...And Sarah is beautiful...

...The way out of this impasse, I hope, is to borrow from two light-hearted communications distributed by my wife, Mig Boyle, and me, having to do with the Big Happenings, and then to touch ever so lightly on matters of moment, depth, and meaning...

...But most remarkable is that the whole figure of Christ seems to be recoiling from the piercing pain about to be inflicted by Thomas' s touch...

...The first of our two messages was a memorandum addressed to the "Liturgy and Liquefaction Coalition," my nickname for a group that has been gathering in its members' homes once a month or so for 1o, these several decades, to worship, talk, dine, and hoist a few...

...I believe: help my unbelief...

...Perhaps Emily Dickinson summed it up when she observed that "the banquet of abstemiousness effaces that of wine" (even if it did take her eight words to say it...

...She was placid and solemn...

...One vexing issue was resolved when the adoption agency told us (at the last possible moment) that we couldn't walk away with our daughter--she might not even be our daughter--unless and until we gave her a name...

...They are reconstructed narratives of the past, subject to many personal vicissitudes...

...There is a lesson for my loquacious spirit here, a deep learning about fasting and feasting, about self-discipline, about simplicity and silence...

...But unless the card's printed message was more than usually beside the point, this would surely be redundant, as well as being rather obvious, and unimaginative in the extreme...

...For the most part, you the reader will have to read between the lines to penetrate the persiflage...

...And Thomas' s unforgettable, utterly unambiguous, "My Lord and my God...

...ROBERT G. HOYT A CHRISTMAS NOTE FROM SCOTLAND BE OF FEW WORDS HER MAJESTY'S WAR ON VERBOSITY here I was, standing in line at the post office again, my arms full of letters to send home to the U.S...

...The Hebrew Scriptures as well bloom with five-petaled flowers: "I know you by name...

...5.03 pounds...

...I wondered to myself, rearranging the slippery stacks of thick (extra-postage-required) envelopes I was carrying...

...The memo asked the other members to accept a new body into the group--even though "she has not yet been shriven" and "does not yet have a full name...

...On the record, I am not now and have never been a model father...

...What compressed sorrow lies in "Jesus wept," what immensities of self-offering are implied in "Yes, Lord...

...But woe to us who cause others to stumble...

...Or one of Abraham' s least golden moments when, surrounded by lascivious Egyptians, he whispered to Sarah, "Say you are my sister...

...This was a way of leading into an improbable announcement: Mig and I were (gulp...

...Perhaps certain psychological findings can help sort through the present morass...

...Commonweal 17 December 1993:5A CELEBRATION FOR EDWARD S. SKILLIN'S 90th Birthday...

...Joseph's Church 371 Sixth Avenue between Waverly & Washington, New York City Lunch to follow ($15 contribution) For additional information call 212-732-0800 To reserve your place at the luncheon send a check for $15 (per person) made payable to the Commonweal Foundation to: Anniversary Celebration 15 Dutch Street, Room 502 New York, NY 10038-3760 Seating is limited...

...So much for cuteness and kitsch...

...For that matter, didn't one word often say what most needed to be said...

...God indeed has come to share our sufferings...

...She doesn't yet know she has cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and--most significantly (to me)--a set of siblings: my six children by a previous marriage, some of whom have offspring of their own who are, astonishingly, Sarah's nephews and nieces...

...Maybe it was possible to communicate meaningfully in five words or less...

...For the very same reasons, I do want to write the column...

...Farewell...